


One Floo Over - Error

by nimodes



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-11
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2018-10-17 11:16:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 25,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10592880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nimodes/pseuds/nimodes
Summary: a different idea on how to handle certain aspects. Departs from "One Floo Over" in the hospital scene.





	1. Chapter 1

One Floo Over - Error Path  
Chapter One  
by Nimodes  
\-- --

A dragon is eating the disclaimer.

\-- --

[ERROR]  
[File Corrupted]  
[Please Contact SysAdmin]

I realized immediately something was very very wrong.

I also realized I'd have to take stock of this later and needed to get away NOW.

I spread my wings and darted off at my best rate of speed, folding my legs close to my body to increase my speed. I had a glimpse of a very startled technician's face as I zipped past him through the ICU doors he'd just opened.

I darted around obstacles quickly and paid attention to the instinct that kept telling me to head up. All the windows were closed, hospital after all, but there were stairs leading up to a fire door that I found quickly.

I opened my mouth, blasted a hole through the door, then went through and rapidly darted around as quickly as I could.

It wasn't until I came to a stop on a tree branch about three miles from the hospital that I was able to crane my neck and determine what exactly I was.

I was maybe a foot long, counting a long neck and tail. Other than that, I was about the size of a pigeon. A six-limbed pigeon with grasping talons on my forelimbs as well as my rear limbs. Not quite bat-wings.

Good color vision. In fact, I was getting a bit of a headache from extra colors and information. I'd find a place to sleep some and finish adapting, but first I needed to find something to eat.

What DID I eat? I ran my tongue over my teeth to check. Pointy teeth in front, flattened teeth in back. Omnivore, probably. Huh.

There were skyscrapers nearby. So I quickly took to the air again, sailed around briefly and caught thermals in order to conserve energy, spotted a pigeon that was almost as big as me, then did what came natural. Instincts rose to the occasion. Apparently I ate things that I cooked with my own fire. Needed some practice though, as my first shot ended up with the pigeon getting a hole drilled through it and bursting into flame thereafter.

Apparently dragonfire was more like the exhaust of a fighter jet than a flamethrower. It hadn't been obvious to me in my need for escape when I'd gone through that door to the roof, but I'd probably slowed by more than half by throwing that fire-beam out. I had to wonder how freaking hot it was when I thought about it. Metal doors meant to contain fires shouldn't have holes melted in them by a fire, should they?

What WAS the melting point of steel anyway? That might give me an idea of how hot the concentrated flame was.

Unfortunately, as a small dragon - there wasn't much I could do about looking up such information. I'd imagine libraries would at the very least look askance at a fire-breathing anything that showed up on their doorstep.

I sighed, sending a puff of smoke out, then finished off the second pigeon I'd managed to bring down. The first one, of course, more resembled a messy piece of charcoal.

Well, at least there were plenty of pigeons about. I'd probably need to grab another and then sleep to digest them. One good thing about being this size was the number of hidey-holes one could use to take a quick nap in.

\-- --

There was a moment of disorientation when I woke, but I was able to crawl out of the drainpipe on the roof of the bank building and stretch myself. I heard a buzzing noise briefly and then spotted a camera.

I have my mischievous moments. I went to a position clearly in view of the thing, stretching out legs and tail and wings briefly. Then I attempted to say something about what a big eye it had.

What emerged from my mouth was a hiss, a gronk sort-of-noise, and finally a bird-like trill.

Okay, I was going to need practice to speak or else I didn't have the right kind of vocal chords. Lovely.

So I rose to my hind-legs, mimed that I had a hat, and did the frog routine from the old Warner Brothers cartoons. THAT should be surreal enough that even if they were watching a livefeed, they weren't going to believe their eyes. I believe the approach is called "Refuge In Audacity" and it sometimes works.

Following that, I leapt off the roof and spread my wings to catch an updraft.

Let's see. Oooh. A paper blowing in the wind. Might give me some much-needed information.

I missed it the first time. It was entirely too easy to lose track of instinct and the result was I'd barely managed to stop myself from crashing in on a board meeting on the seventh floor of a nearby building.

Literally.

Finally I did manage to catch the thing in my mouth and glide to a table outside a street-level cafe where I could spread it out and read the thing.

"Uhm, excuse me?" asked someone with a cup of coffee halfway to his mouth.

Unable to actually say anything, I simply trilled at him, smiled briefly then tried to read. May 27, 1985. Paper didn't look too old so probably within a week of that date.

"Excuse me, but are you... a dragon?" asked the businessman.

I turned my head to him, nodded, and went back to look at the paper. Not really enough data to compare with any of the worlds I'd previously been on, and I wasn't that familiar with British news anyway. Bangladesh had been hit by a cyclone and was still mopping up.

There was a smash of glass and both me and the businessman turned to a waitress who was standing there holding nothing in her hands. There were the remains of a coffee decanter near her feet though.

I trilled briefly at her, trying to convey an apology for disturbing her day.

"Well, at least you're a polite dragon," said the businessman.

I nodded at him again before I leapt up and began beating my wings again, rapidly leaving the cafe behind. Maybe I could find my mission objective. Have to see what resources I could scrape together.

Now there was -

[Ping! File Recovery!]

I almost collided with a window, though I recovered quickly and found a place to land that was a bit out of the way.

[Status Screen Recovered]

Okay, that was hopeful.

[Race: Greater Dragon - Celestial Sundrake]  
[Category: Hatchling]

Okay, that wasn't particularly helpful. Greater Dragon just meant that there was a local species of dragon that was not sentient. Either that or there were wyverns or something.

Let's see. Maybe if I...

\-- --

[Sundrake, Hatchling]  
[Tiny dragon, Neutral Good]  
[Armor Class: 17]  
[Hit Points: 32]  
[Speed: 30, Fly: 60, Swim 30]  
[Str:17 Dex:14 Con:15 Int:13 Wis:13 Cha:12]  
[Saving Throws: Dex+2, Con+2, Wis+2, Cha+2]  
[Skill: Perception+2, Stealth+4]  
[Damage Immunities: Fire]  
[Senses: Aura Sight 10]  
[Languages: Draconic, Celestial]  
[Challenge: 2 (450xp)]  
[Bite: (melee) 2]  
[Claw: (melee) 1]  
[Poison: Paralytic 1/2 hour (DC 11)]  
[Telepathy: Limited]  
[Breath Weapon: Celestial Fire 1d6+2, double damage vs undead/demonic, purifying]  
[Spell Use: Sundrakes have access to Clerical spells of the Sun/Light, Protection, or Healing dominions. (choose two)]  
[Sundrakes inhabit the plane of Celestia where they act as messengers and couriers for Beings of Power.]  
[At Hatchling stage, their powers and abilities are severely curtailed.]

\-- --

I wondered about that Telepathy because not being able to speak at all was going to be a major pain. What limits? And I had a poison in my bite?

A breath weapon that was purifying fire? Made sense for a celestial creature that could be expected to encounter intrusions from a lower plane but how did that actually work?

Well, if I could choose my spell domains, I'd go with Sun and Healing.

For now though, I had both eaten and slept. I had now an idea of WHERE and WHEN I was. I now needed to find out where I was supposed to go.

It was going to be rather difficult keeping a low profile though.

I settled into a good spot and then wove magic into a form that felt right. Show The Path, which was a fairly simple spell that lacked the precision of a typical divination spell.

This might take awhile though. Fortunately, being as small and unremarkable as I was - it would be fairly easy to fly under the radar. So to speak.


	2. Aurors & Dragons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a dragon between destinations

One Floo Over - Error Path  
Chapter Two: Aurors and Dragons  
by Nimodes  
\-- --

Disclaimer not found, malfunction. Reboot required.

\-- --

"What exactly IS that?" asked Amelia Bones.

The image captured on the third page of the Daily Prophet was of a dragon posing with some woman.

"A muggle by the name of Anne McCaffrey," said one of her Aurors, an Obliviation Specialist named Rufus T. Firefly.

"I take it you dealt with the matter," said Amelia Bones, deciding that correcting Rufus was more problem than it was really worth. She had, of course, been referring to a tiny dragon sipping tea next to the woman.

"That would be a problem," said Rufus. "You see, she's the writer of a series of novels dealing with fictional dragons. If I Obliviated her of her knowledge of dragons, well, that'd certainly put a pixie in the potion factory."

Amelia frowned and jabbed a finger at the accompanying article. "Wait. Thousands of muggles have spotted the 'fire lizard'?"

"Apparently Ms. McCaffrey has written of a very similar looking and acting creature in some of her stories," said Rufus. "They're fairly popular among muggles, part of a genre called 'sciencey phantasies' and the fans of such work number in the millions and are called 'nerds' or 'geeks' - but I wasn't able to determine what separates the two terms."

"Investigate that further after dealing with this problem," said Amelia with a frown. "So, if you didn't Obliviate her about it - what DID you do?"

"Ah," said Rufus. "I simply gathered information on the sighting, determined the beastie was long gone, observed the merchandising, made a few suggestions here and there. Apparently the muggles have already come up with an explanation that doesn't involve the magical world at all."

Amelia looked up, raising an eyebrow. "A dragon, though of a type I've never heard of, is panicking thousands of muggles and they don't associate such a thing with magic? How is that even possible?"

"Apparently the dragons in those novels are able to travel in time, though it is very risky and likely to involve the dragon disappearing entirely," said Rufus. "Half the muggles involved are going with the theory that at some point in the future someone inspired by the novels created such a creature - which went back in time specifically to meet with the author who created the species that inspired them. Oh, and 'panic' is the wrong word. More like 'fascinate' or 'intrigue' perhaps."

Amelia Bones blinked at that, processing it. "What?"

"It's even possible that this IS exactly what they think it is," said Rufus. "Fascinating, isn't it? A dragon, but a nonmagical one, that resembles no known dragon species just shows up out of the blue?"

"Nonmagical?" asked Amelia.

"Well, according to the muggles - nonmagical," admitted Rufus. "I suspect that this is either a mule or a species that just avoided being documented until recently."

Amelia nodded. A mule being a nonfertile cross between two similar species. Her focus though was on containment of the problem to the magical world and the Statute of Secrecy in particular. "So, how difficult to just Obliviate everyone?"

"By the time we learned of it, roughly four billion muggles have seen the pictures and videos," said Rufus. "We could try a few hundred Obliviates and the usual cock-and-bull story of it all being fake like we do with the crop circles and similar events. A few false memories added to a few troublemakers who would then claim responsibility. That's standard operational procedure after all. The problem is that some of those who have spotted the little guy are highly placed within muggle society."

Amelia stared for a few seconds. "Excuse me. For a moment there I thought you said 'billions'?"

"Oh yes, their press started jumping all over it," said Rufus. "Apparently the little guy is extremely popular. There are shirts, little plushy dolls, and all sorts of merchandise involved."

Amelia watched as her Auror fumbled around in a pocket before drawing out a little ceramic dragon curled around a bowl. It was a moment before she realized that this was a teacup with the tail looped around for a handle. "Oh. Fudge."

"Now for another problem with this," said Rufus, a stained finger tapping the Prophet article. "This does NOT behave like a dragon. It behaves like one of the fictional dragons from this woman's works. At least semi-sentient and capable of understanding human language."

Amelia thought about the possibility of even a tiny dragon that was capable of such a thing. "Can you track it down and capture it?"

"I've got Chicolino and Pinky hunting it down even now," Rufus told her.

Amelia winced and then got thoughtful as if considering something before she shook her head, apparently dismissing whatever thought had come to her.

\-- --

I flew, opened a space/time rift, and settled down onto a branch to see if it worked this time.

Nope.

It WAS a nice-looking fish and chips establishment though, and the smell of beer-battered fish had me salivating in short order.

The unexpected discovery that I could rip a hole in space/time and pop through had been something I'd gotten rather enthusiastic about and immediately set about testing to see exactly what the limits and range were available.

Unfortunately, there appeared to be a learning curve as far as navigating was concerned. My first time had been about a kilometer as I'd been attempting to escape some lunatic with a butterfly net. The second time I'd ended up in what I'd guessed as being the local parliament or whatever they called themselves. I'd trilled at the man behind the podium as an attempt at an apology, which he'd nodded at and then gone on about some useless blather that sounded like typical politician speech.

I'd then gone around the room briefly, sniffing at things, before I found someone who had some chocolate chip cookies and shamelessly begging for one.

What? Even dragons like chocolate chip cookies.

I could manage three wormholes before I needed to rest longer than a minute. It didn't seem to matter what the distance travelled was - it took roughly two seconds to make the gap, five seconds to fly through it, and then another two seconds for the gap to close. It was easiest to do when I was flying.

I also seemed to need to eat a lot to recover from doing these little jaunts. I'd think it burned calories like nobody's business. Figure out a way for regular humans to do it and that'd be the popular way to lose weight.

Some woman with a couple of those Corgi dogs had just stopped eating and was now staring up at me.

I flew down, landing on her table and trilled. What I intended to say was basically "Good evening, young lady. I don't suppose you could spare a bite or two of that fish, could you?"

One of the Corgi dogs yapped at me, which sounded to me rather like a disagreement about who should be getting table scraps. I counter-argued that more would be forthcoming for the Corgi while I was moving on thereafter. The Corgi counter-countered that his human was his human, and that food was food. I replied that it was fish after all, and beef or another red meat was better for both him and his compatriot.

The other Corgi chose that moment to let loose a colossal flatulence before informing me that he was perfectly content to catch a nap in the sun and to leave him completely out of this argument.

I made a brief gagging noise, seconded by the girl who'd been watching our exchange of nonverbals with amusement and some sort of small camcorder before I took flight again. Back to eating pigeon I suppose. That fish HAD smelled rather tasty though. Might have to see if I was amphibious, do the osprey routine and catch fish on my own.

Pfeh. Pigeon was really getting old. Crunchy bones. Oily taste that was getting more ick every time I ate one.

Someone threw a red bolt of energy at me. Which was not very typical but I wasn't interested in finding out who was playing imitation Stormtrooper on the roof of an insurance company's building.

I settled into a tree after another ten seconds.

Magic. There was a faint scent in the air of arcane magic.

I trilled in an interested fashion, deciding to try and find whatever had given off that scent.

It wasn't common, I now realized. So - maybe I was in a "Dresden Files" universe? Magic was hidden away from humanity in general but if you knew where to look you could find the signs.

Thinking back, I could remember no signs of magic. Huh. No other dragons either. Maybe we were an endangered species locally? It couldn't be that I was the only one though - the system was built that you could only insert into a reality in a form that fit that reality. Otherwise a good portion of people I had worked with would have caused normal humans to run off screaming and clawing at their eyes.

That would make sense - I was an endangered species of some kind. That's why people kept filming me.

I took off again and glided over the little suburban neighborhood. I ought to be able to find something shortly.


	3. Muggles & Dragons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a dragon tries to understand what's going on.

One Floo Over - Error Path  
Chapter Three: Muggles & Dragons  
by Nimodes  
\-- --

A dragon ate my disclaimer.

\-- --

I watched the place the faint scent of magic had come from, and I was actually somewhat disgusted.

Magical cats.

As creatures with magical senses, they were able to detect my presence in very short order.

"(What in hell is a dragon doing here?)" one asked.

"(Go away, filthy wyrmling. We are not food,)" said another magic-cat.

I trilled at them. "(Not looking for food. I scented magic and followed it here.)"

The cats gathered in the backyard as I watched from the top of the fence. Since some of them were much larger than me, it was a bit unnerving.

"(It speaks,)" said one.

"(You suppose it is here because of the boy?)" asked another.

"(Filthy wyrmling, but perhaps it is tasty?)" asked a particular large one.

"(You shouldn't eat anything capable of intelligently stating that it is not food,)" I trilled. "(I am not food. You are obviously also not food.)"

"(Then I shouldn't eat any mice capable of telling me that they don't want to be eaten?)" responded the large one. "(Your reasoning is flawed.)"

"(My reasoning is based on personal philosophy,)" I responded. "(I am simply here because of the magic. If you do not wish to converse, I can leave.)"

"(Then leave while you can, filthy wyrmling,)" responded the largest one, who'd been quiet till then. "(This territory is ours.)"

Ah. We were both predators and predators did not, generally speaking, share territory. No wonder they'd immediately turned hostile on my showing up.

"(Very well then. Good hunting, warriors.)" I spread wings and leapt into the air. There was a boy involved according to that one cat. That sounded promising.

Maybe that house? There was some sort of magic surrounding it. I'd have to keep an eye on it.

\-- --

"There is no budget this year for new brooms, alas," said Albus Dumbledore. "We shall simply have to make do with what we have."

"Some of those brooms are unsuitable for anything but the fireplace," said Madam Hooch.

"We've got to squeak by somehow, same as every year," said Minerva McGonagall.

"Maybe we can get some of the Seventh Years to work on renewing the charms and repairing the brooms," offered Filius Flitwick. "An extra credit project while preparing for their NEWTs?"

"We'd have to get permission from the broom manufacturies as much of their work is proprietary," said Albus. He shrugged a moment later. "Send them an owl on it. Maybe if nothing else we can get them to send us a few repair kits at cost."

"What about... Albus. One of your whirli-things is chiming," said Severus Snape, glancing at a shelf.

"What?" asked Dumbledore, quickly getting up and moving quickly to the shelf in question. "Most curious. I'm not quite sure what to make of this reading."

"What reading?" asked Minerva as the teachers quickly gathered to observe the set of spinning discs.

"Something has disturbed the wards at a certain location," said Albus Dumbledore. "Something clumsy but not hostile."

"Well, let's go," said Filius Flitwick.

"What?" asked Albus Dumbledore.

"A little fieldwork would help me stretch my legs, so to speak," said Filius, checking his wand. "Hagrid might come along as well."

"Why me?" asked Rubeus Hagrid, curious.

"Clumsy magical but not hostile," said Filius. "Might be some beastie trying to move into a magical area."

"Oi yeah." The big man nodded. Might just be a little gnome or something else. It did happen quite a lot.

"Fine, let's go," said Minerva McGonagall. Someone had to be the voice of reason and it WAS an excuse to get out for a bit.

"You lot go," said Madam Hooch. "I've a letter to send."

\-- --

I was quite aware when a bunch of people came out of the cat-lair. Whoever they were, subtle wasn't in their nature. Robes, wands, and a distinct gust of magical scent.

Mages then. I used my small size to my advantage, landing on a tree branch and observing them.

It paid dividends immediately. They went straight to a house down the road. THAT house - the one with a bit of magic surrounding it.

"Them," said a woman. "Well, I wanted to check up on them in any case."

"That would have drawn attention straight to where no attention should be raised," said the oldest of the group.

"What's that there?" asked a particularly large person among the group.

Crap. He was looking straight at me. So much for being well hidden amongst the foliage.

"A dragon? A newly hatched one perhaps?" asked the shortest of the group.

"Must be what triggered your ward, dragons are not known for subtlety or for their intelligence," said a man who reminded me of some sort of hook-nosed bat.

"That's not a breed I recognize," said the huge one.

"Well, I'll just stun the beast and get this over with," said the bat-guy, pointing his wand at me.

Magic wands pointing in your direction can be a very bad thing. I did the sensible thing and ducked behind the trunk then used my claws to climb rather quickly to a different position. A squirrel chittered an argument at me, but I passed it quickly and didn't even take a chunk out of the rude thing as I went.

"Where'd that dratted beast go?"

From the new position, I spread wings then leapt away from the tree. I tried to keep something between me and the group of mages, though they spread out and that quickly became impossible.

"Incarcerous!" one called out.

I dove, narrowly avoiding some sort of magical-rope spell aimed at me. It looked as if I was going to have to do that space-time rip thing again, which was going to be a pain as I was pretty sure that my reason for being in this reality was in that one house.

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU FREAKS DOING HERE?!" yelled some woman.

"Incarcerous!"  
"Stupefy!"  
"Stupefy!"

The woman who'd come charging out of the house went down after being hit with all three spells. Huh. Well, at least they were apparently throwing non-fatal spells around.

"Oh dearie me," said the oldest of the group.

The door to the house was now open. I dove through, only realizing thereafter that this wasn't necessarily the smartest thing I could do. After all, there would be less in the way of escape routes once I was inside. More hiding places, perhaps.

"AHHHHH!" yelled a pudgy boy as I darted around him.

"STUPEFY!"

Large boy hit the floor as I started diving around furniture. I was going to have to try and do that teleport thingie (and come up with a name for it) to get out of here.

Another little boy was looking up in alarm as he came out of a closet under the stairs and just froze for a moment.

I screeched at him. "(Crazy magic types! You might want to hide!)"

"Right! In here!" said the boy.

I was in the closet and the door was closed before I realized he'd understood me.

"(Uhm. Was that a fluke or did you understand me?)" I asked as quietly as I could, though it sounded like an interrogative trill to my own ears.

The boy glanced at me, then reached up to take his glasses off, clean them, then put them back. "You... you're a bat-lizard?"

There was a deep sigh and the door was opened, revealing the old wizard from earlier. "The term is 'dragon' and apparently the situation has gotten rather complicated."

\-- --

It didn't take long at all for us to all be gathered about a table and chairs in the yard. That the table and the chairs had been rocks and twigs was quite curious to me, as I was wondering where the extra mass and such was pulled from.

I trilled a few questions but apparently the child with the scar was only able to understand me when he was frightened nearly out of his mind. Pity about that.

"Well, this is awkward," said the woman as she rejoined us. "Those two are quite unhappy at the moment. And it appears that young Harry has been forced to live in a cupboard under the stares since the age he no longer required his nappies to be changed."

"Well, yes," said Harry.

"I see," said the sneering guy who resembled a bat or something. "Petunia Dursley was always quite unpleasant."

"I suppose a spot of tea is completely out of the question then," said the short guy.

I made a disappointed noise. I rather liked tea. Could certainly use a cuppa right about now.

Everyone stared at me for a moment.

"Well, we can always just Obliviate everyone when we leave," said hook-nose.

I hissed at him.

"Despite the name, it merely means wiping memories," explained the short guy to me, "not consigning someone to oblivion."

I made an "ah" noise and nodded. Yeah, that made more sense.

"It... it understood you," said the very old man.

"What, you just got that?" asked very-short. "I noticed that it was actively adapting tactics when we were trying to catch it."

"But dragons are not intelligent creatures," protested old guy.

I made a "pfeh" noise towards him.

"Able to understand speaking but not actually speak himself, eh?" asked the really big guy. "Oi little guy. How'd ye like to come visit a magic forest? Be some good huntin' there."

I made a noise on that, trying to sound like I wasn't making a commitment.

"What's your name then, little fella?" asked big guy.

I trilled back at him, trying to convey that I didn't have a human mouth and so any name I had wasn't likely to be easily conveyed.

"All right then, Trilby," said big guy. "I be Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of Keys and Groundskeeper at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry."

I tried to make an impressed-sound, mainly because I thought it would be most polite.

"'Witchcraft and Wizardry'?" asked scar-head.

"Ah, well," began the woman. "You see, Harry, you may only be seven years old but..."

The brief silence was broken by the large guy. "You're a wizard, Harry."

"I can't be a wizard, I'm just Harry," pointed out the boy.

"Fuss and bother," said hook-nose. "Haven't we spent enough time on this? Just cage the dratted reptile and let us leave this place."

"As tempting as that is," said old guy, "since we're here and all."

"If you're going to insist on him staying here," said the woman in a rapidly thickening Scottish accent. "I'm putting an expansion charm on that cupboard."

"I looked into that cupboard," said hook-nose. "You might include an anti-vermin ward and possibly a dust-repeller."

"Not that I'm arguing but I'm rather surprised at that from you," said Minerva.

Hook-nose glared for a moment. "My father may have done something similar to me, once or twice. I do not hold that such things necessarily build character."

"Ah," said the woman.

"Well, let's get to it then," said older guy. "We'll simply take the beast to the Forbidden Forest and -"

I leapt up, opened a space/time rip, and flew through.

\-- --

"Albus," said Minerva with a sigh. "We had already established that the wee beastie could understand human speech."

"Oh, right," said Albus.

"You aren't taking your anti-forgetfulness potion are you?" asked McGonagall.

"I forgot?" half-asked Dumbledore.

"I'll brew a fresh batch," said Severus Snape as he got up. "A more useful investment of time."

"I'll start on that cupboard then," said Filius Flitwick.

"I'll assist, then we'll just have a word or two with the Dursleys, shall we?" said Minerva.

"Oh?" asked Severus Snape. He paused as he considered the idea before deciding that it wasn't worth the effort. His memories of Petunia Evans were that she was quite unpleasant.

\-- --

I reappeared in the air over another section of London, but I wasn't familiar with it at all.

I glided around, looking for that faint scent of magic - though a nice fish and chips place would have been nice too.

Suburbs again. Unlike that place with the boy Harry, these houses didn't all look the same. Instead there were maybe five designs that were repeated and scattered about.

So - slightly better neighborhood.

Oooh. Barbeque? I sniffed the errant breeze. Yeah. Tangy barbeque sauce. Sausage? Beef, definitely beef. Chicken? Yes, that was definitely chicken. Heck, there was a fruity smell that I found kind of intriguing as well.

I followed my nose, it always knows. Err. No. This was MEAT. Something that most dragons would agree was one of the four primary food groups, excepting green dragons who just had peculiar tastes and maybe black dragons who liked things pickled a bit much. (Meat, fish, roughage, and the tears of our enemies being the basis of a well-balanced diet.)

I circled the backyard gathering once, scoping things out and deciding my landing spot. Not on the table with the food though. There!

I landed on the back of a chair, with a little girl reading a book. Politeness was likely to score me more points than any other approach. So I waited. And waited. And nobody was paying attention to the dragon who'd landed on the back of the chair?

Maybe dragons WERE common, after all? Hmmm. What was the little girl reading?

Oooh. History. That'd tell me a lot about the setting I found myself in. Might as well just read over her shoulder then.

Unfortunately, I wasn't that familiar with British history in the first place. No idea if the way history had gone in the War Of The Roses was different here or there.

"Erk!"

The little girl and I both turned our attention to the father, who had a paper plate in one hand and a spatula in the other and was staring at us.

I made an interrogative trill.

"Oh," said the little girl, glancing up at me and then at her father and then back to me. "You're the dragon that was on the telly, aren't you?"

I nodded and made an interrogative noise, cocking my head to the side to try and make it clear that I wasn't being an aggressive dragon. They might go chasing me off with a broom or something and that would mean not getting a bite of that sausage.

"I see," said the little girl, apparently ignoring the way both parents were now staring at me. "My name is Hermione Granger. And you are?"

I trilled back at her.

"Ah, the curses of a limited vocabulary," said the girl.

I agreed wholeheartedly with that sentiment and trilled a compliment at her powers of observation.

"Ah," said the father, looking a bit at a loss for words.

"Do you mind if I continue reading?" asked Hermione.

I shook my head from side to side, trying not to smile with any teeth showing as it might alarm the parents.

"Do you like books then?" asked Hermione.

I nodded enthusiastically. Outside of dragons and dogs, books were among the best of friends. Inside of dragons, it was hard to read.

The girl practically beamed with enthusiasm.

The little girl got a plate of grilled sausage with a fruit salad on the side. I felt myself salivate a bit but managed to keep it under control.

"You're a dragon," noted the father.

I nodded and trilled at him, then turned my attention back to the book - the girl now holding it so I could better read it alongside her.

"You're real," said the mother.

I simply looked at her and blinked a couple of times. Well, of course I was real. That sausage was real too. I would be more than happy to make the acquaintance of that sausage and confirm my reality by devouring it. And some of that fruit salad too - the blueberries smelled quite tasty.

"Are you actually reading?" asked the father.

I trilled at him, managing to raise an eye-ridge and frown a bit.

"I get the feeling he's hungry, Dad," said Hermione, immediately putting herself in the category of not-clueless and potential friend.

"You mean he IS like a fire lizard and he's able to project feelings?" asked her father.

I let out a sigh. Really, did I look like a lizard? Six limbs, the middle of which were wings?

"Yes. I'm currently getting a feeling as if he's rather curious of things, hungry, and somewhat exasperated," said Hermione. "And just now - startled."

I WAS rather startled. I was projecting empathically? That could be a serious drawback down the road.

"Well, I..."

The father had a rolled up newspaper. I eyed it, then him and did my best to give a "you gotta be kidding me" look.

"Dad. Dragon. Breathes fire?" pointed out Hermione.

"Mef," I managed, following it with a brief puff of flame.

"Well excuse me for being a concerned parent when there's a foot-long version of Smaug next to my daughter," said Mister Granger.

I made a questioning noise. They had Tolkein here? That was good. Wonder if he was still alive in this reality, I never did finish reading the sequel to Lord Of The Rings. In most realities, he had died sometime after the Hobbit and then his trilogy. The follow-up novel was in maybe one in a hundred realities where JRR Tolkein had managed to write at all.

"I think he liked being compared to Smaug," said Hermione.

"I'm still wondering why he decided to visit you, pumpkin," asked the father.

I trilled at him, explaining that this location not only had beef sausage being grilled - the girl had a faint scent of magic.

"I'm magical?" asked Hermione.

I stumbled and nearly fell off my perch. That was the second time someone had managed to understand a bit of what I had said. At that realization, I felt my grip slip and I really did fall off my perch. And landed on my face. Really losing a few dignity points there.

"Okay, that was funny," said the father.

"What do you mean, I'm magical?" said Hermione.

"Merf," I managed as I got back up and tried to dust myself off. Cats are the only ones who quite manage the "I intended to do that" thing when they've literally put their foot in it, dragons of whatever size apparently are not quite so capable.

"That really doesn't tell me anything," stated the little girl.

"Do you really understand that thing?" asked the mother.

"Merf," I protested, as that seemed a bit harsh.

"Wait, she's a magical girl? Like that girl in the cartoons?" asked her father.

"Merf?" I asked. What cartoons?

"What?" asked Hermione.

"You know some of those foreign cartoons? One of the tapes we play in the waiting room for the kids has some magical girl hero," said the father.

I trilled, wanting to see that. I wasn't going to bet on it, but then again I wasn't going to rule it out.

"That?" asked the mother. "Are you going to do a backflip and produce some magical toy that will cause MY daughter to turn into a magical warrior of some kind?"

"Urg," I said, trying to indicate that I didn't think so. But maybe...

It wouldn't be the strangest thing I'd ever done, would it?

"Hermione, you are NOT going to do any 'sparkle unicorn rainbow attack', do you hear me?" said the mother.

Hermione gaped at her mother briefly.

"Somehow I doubt the dragon is here to have a seven-year-old girl facing monsters in modern London," said her father.

"Urg," I repeated, because really that was a VERY low probability.

"That didn't sound like a denial," noted the mother, lifting a broom that was looking very large at the moment.


	4. 4: Dummies & Dragons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which muggles do what muggles do when faced with the Unknown. How can I make a quick profit off this?

One Floo Over - Error Path  
Chapter Four: Dummies & Dragons  
by Nimodes  
\-- --

Fanfiction, so yeah the setting is owned by others.

\-- --

I caught my breath after a few minutes. I wondered briefly if this was a Ranma-style universe and Ms Granger was a practitioner of Broom-Fu, which would turn out to be a martial arts style practiced and perfected by Chinese housewives for over 3000 years as they defended their households from bandits and marauders and door-to-door salesmen.

Probably not, but there was at least as much chance of that as there was of Hermione Granger being Magical Warrior Rainbow Unicorn or whatever the series was that the father put on the television in his office waiting room for kids.

I was less than motivated to show up again and check after the mother had defended her child, citing that the child in question was entirely too young to be facing whatever menace was in the television series. Even if that sausage had smelled really intriguing.

Apparently, despite my small size, I ate frequently. That could be one of two things: either I had a hummingbird's metabolism, or I was going to be a lot bigger sometime in the future.

: And, for the record, pigeons taste awful. Each one I managed to bring down tasted worse than the one before, and how that was even possible I was filing under the "Life's Great Mysteries" section.

Okay, I needed something besides pigeon that I could eat locally. Cockroaches and rats had damn little appeal.

"Hello, welcome to the Cheese Shoppe! Oh. We don't get many dragons here."

I sniffed. They didn't smell like they had any cheese at all.

The man behind the counter looked somewhat bemused. And bored.

"Merf?" I asked.

"No, haven't got any of that," said the counterperson.

"Pfeh." I turned around and left via the same window I'd come in through.

With some trepidation, I decided to return to the same neighborhood those magi had chased me from. Maybe I could get something to eat there without impinging upon the territory those oversized cats had staked out for themselves.

The REALLY weird thing about those cats, and the point that had unnerved me the most, was that they had been COOPERATIVE. Cats generally did not cooperate with each other. A "pack of cats" was just wrong in my experience. Pride - yes. Family - yes. Group of cooperative cats that was larger than the average pride - heck no.

My sense of smell and hearing were more acute than in human form. I seemed to be a bit far-sighted though, in that things close were a bit blurry. I also had discovered I had a set of eyelids that were mostly transparent in addition to the opaque ones. Weird, but it fit the idea of being celestial couriers as some of the Powers of that plane were aquatic in nature. Being able to get around in watery environments for at least short periods made sense on that level.

On the other hand, as near as I could tell, I was primarily a creature of Fire and Air. Flying was my natural primary mode of transportation.

A flash of color on a street-corner caught my attention and I investigated further.

When I got there, it was a few moments of staring before I fully registered what I was looking at.

Plushy dragons. A full dozen stuffed cloth versions of myself, full size considering how small I was, sitting on a shelf on a pushcart.

I flew down and warbled first at the dummy dragons, basically asking anyone in range if I really had that goofy expression stuck on my face. Then I warbled at the vendor - this time asking where my cut of the sales was.

"'Ere now. They's just stuffed dolls for the kiddies, lil' feller. Ain't no cause for alarm, ain't no kin of yers."

That was hardly what I was asking, but my frustration with the lack of communication was rapidly becoming a running theme.

"Merble," I managed, still making the occasional attempt to speak English with a mouth that was not at all constructed for such.

"No, little one, these are hypoallergenic and perfectly safe. Guaranteed not to eat yer cat, burn the drapes, or accidently shred yer armchair."

Great, we were drawing a crowd. I was apparently drawing this guy with the cheaply made merchandise more business. And still not getting any money myself. Not that I was anxious for gold in the manner of some dragon out of Wagnerian opera, but something other than pigeon was definitely desired.

Though the idea of a bed of gold coins held some appeal - it was likely to beat a tree branch in comfort and much less likely to catch fire if I snorted out a bit in my sleep. Still not entirely comfortable though, or so I'd expect. Also - didn't gold have a relatively low melting point? Turning your bed of gold coins to a rather large lump of half-molten gold wouldn't be good either. Not to mention missing out on the actual value of the coins themselves.

"Ahem," I managed fairly well. I spit a little flame and then looked very seriously towards the racks of plushies.

The vendor stared at me for a minute or two. "Pizza?"

I chirped happily at him.

"I'd imagine summin a bit fruity to wash it down?" asked the vendor.

I nodded.

"In return you hang around and draw a bit of business?" suggested the vendor.

I cocked my head to show I was considering that. Yeah, that did sound like a job I could do. After letting him stew a bit I nodded. But it better be a good pizza.

\-- --

A belly full of pizza, even if it was just a cheese pizza with mushrooms and pepperoni, and a cup of hot tea did WONDERS for my mood.

Also distended my belly out a bit, and made me want to take a nap and sleep it off.

[System Repair - 30%]  
That got my attention. The User Interface from the old Avatar System was still working away and had gotten a significant chunk done? Something had to have come back online for me to get that message. That meant finding a quiet place (after another teleport) and figuring out what.

The vendor had sold out in three hours. I had, rather heroically I thought, avoided torching him or those cheap plushies. A deal was a deal though.

Let's see. Inventory still had more "???" than anything else. I had some icons though, so that was a book and that was a sword and that was a widget of some kind.

[Due to practice with a skill, you have gained a level of Stealth.]

I had skill-up notices?

[Due to practice with a skill, you have gained Haggling level 1.]

Okay, that was a bit late.

[Due to practice with a skill, you have gained Binge Eating level 1.]

Oh, come on!

This had to be more evidence that the User Interface was seriously corrupted. I blamed Toltiir, a god of mischief and pranks and chaos who had crossed my path once or twice in the past. Either him/her/it or Loki.

I sighed and began checking. Okay, my "status" screen had changed.

I now had special abilities. Unfortunately, only two things were legible. Limited Telepathy and Dimension Door.

I now had skills. Including Binge Eating. Ugh.

I was a dragon. Binge Eating was normal behavior. You ate and slept for long periods. Usually sleeping after a large meal. There was even something called a dragonsleep where one was basically shut down for years after an eating binge, especially when one was older and continuing to grow.

Though as I was a very small dragon, I suspected that I'd only do that when hitting a growth spurt.

Huh. That was a thought. I was a hatchling of a dragon species I wasn't familiar with. When was I going to hit that and grow into the next stage of development? Dragons didn't grow in a human manner - they stayed mostly the same size until they gorged themselves and fell asleep to wake in that next stage of development. One of the reasons dragons had territories and didn't group together normally was that the older and larger dragons tended to deplete their environments when they hit those periods of "eat nearly everything in sight" before they fell into a near-coma. With dragons, that could be five years down the road for a hatchling to a century or more. Depended on the expected lifespan as far as I knew, not having made a study of it before.

Celestial Sundragons? Since the size was so small, I'd expect a decade or less for hatchling. Maybe a year or two in dragonsleep. From Juvenile Stage on it would probably be several decades apart and after reaching Adult stage there would be centuries later. After trying to remember for several minutes, dragon lifespans seemed to be anything from three centuries in length to in excess of ten thousand years. As long as the magic level of the universe they were in would allow them to be active. Eventually they'd either die of old age or (in the case of particularly powerful species) simply spend most of their time asleep as millenia passed them by. Wasn't there one or two I'd encountered where entire continents had formed around them while they slept?

And by "nearly everything" I did indeed mean "nearly everything" - the ecosystem usually required a long period of time to recover from such things. Heck, some of the dragon species would even eat and digest stone and quantum-locked creatures. Dragons were one of the few things which could naturally prey upon things like Weeping Angels in universes where the two could cross paths. (In the case of the universe where I had encountered one such, I had been told that the flavor was rather like well-aged basalt with a nicely tangy aftertaste that came both before and after the meal. Probably due to the temporal dislocation qualities of the meal.)

Ohhhh! Apples!

"Tracey, is that a dragon eating an apple on your family's picnic bench?"

"It's not a species that's in my books," said another little girl's voice.

I looked up from my meal, the teleport/dimension door to this location having consumed enough energy that I wasn't above having a little more snacking done.

It looked as if the sheen of magic was making things kind of glittery. Which was probably just the same kind of effect you got from moving from a darkened room to one brightly lit. My eyes would probably adjust from magic-poor to magic-rich environment in a few minutes. In the meantime I flared my wings and trilled something friendly at the girls.

Then someone hit me with a red beam that hurt like blazes and blew up the tree branch I was resting on.

I did a blind dimension door/leap/hyperspace shunt without even thinking about where I wanted to end up.

Which, as it turns out, was really not the best idea.


	5. Dogs & Dragons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a dragon discovers blindly leaping in and out of space/time is not recommended.

One Floo Over - Error Path  
Chapter Five: Dogs & Dragons  
by Nimodes  
\-- --

Fanfiction, so yeah the setting is owned by others.

\-- --

Anne McCaffrey called it "Between" in her novels, in those universes where her novels were novels and not some future history that had not been foreshadowed by a 20th Century author.

Some writers called it "Hyperspace" or "Subspace" or some other term. It didn't even exist in all universes, some universes having a slightly different architecture in the lower and upper dimensional patterns bordering the three-dimensional in a fourth medium that most humans accepted as "normal" space/time.

As a Celestial Dragon, for a creature that was a courier/messenger of a high-level plane of existence which had a surface area of as close to infinite as made little difference, my "Dimension Door" ability allowed me to create wormholes through space/time that bypassed distance. Usually I had at least a vague idea of where I was heading - over there a few miles or some line-of-sight point or something. Sometimes I would miss my appointed spot and I ended up elsewhere.

This had been a blind jump trying to avoid something while I was experiencing a momentary panic.

Which had me surrounded by a cold blackness for a count of ten.

At which point I emerged again, and I recognized my surroundings. Which was completely unexpected and I settled to the top of a stone arch in order to properly stare at things.

My memory was still mostly filled with gaps, but certain places and things were apparently there in enough memories that even with this mess I still retained some familiarity with some aspect of that universe.

There were things that stood out in certain branches - tribbles for example. If you saw a tribble, you knew that you were in a universe that fit under the umbrella of a "Star Trek" universe even if that particular universe didn't have a Federation Of Planets or USS Enterprise. Most times in such a universe there WAS both a Federation AND an Enterprise. Not always though. Some universes had a starship named Enterprise but the Federation was more a Hegemony or an Empire. All the universes in question though could be referenced as a "Star Trek" universe due to the other universes that often had a TV program of that name. The official designation was EWR or STK series of universes due to common points to each being wildly divergent further on.

Apparently my Celestial-based teleport ability allowed for jumping between universes as well if I didn't have a clear idea of where I was going.

The common aspect in this case was a creature but was not a tribble. It was also in a wire-noose trap. Which was why the creature hadn't freed itself despite being a magical creature.

I checked and the User Interface that Hephaestus had cobbled together had an entry for the creature.

[Celestial Dog (Puppy)]

So. In a primary "pokemon"-style universe, the universal concept of nature and elemental spirits manifested in creatures. This was reflected in many universes through the Japanese animism belief system, particularly the Shinto faith. There were other universes with that belief/concept/manifestation in various manners. In Celestial planes you could find beliefs manifested as reality. Hence the puppy before me.

Having foreclaws, I could remove the wire noose easily enough. Not enough flexibility to untie a decent knot, but sufficient for such a task as this.

Upon being freed, the beastie that actually massed more than double my own began assaulting me.

"(Agh! Slobber! Gak! No! Down boy!)"

The puppy stopped and cocked his head. "(Eh?)"

"(Oh. Translation effect. Possibly because we share a Celestial descriptor. Be handy if that would work with humans though.)" I scraped as much slobber off as I could. "(Look, you're free. Go home before anyone comes to check their trap.)"

"(Where is home?)"

I looked over the dog, but no - he was not apparently kidding.

Great.

"I think I heard something!" called out a gruff voice.

"(Okay, think hard of home.)" I grabbed the relatively huge puppy and tried to dimension door away.

Quick note - do not try this at home. Mass matters.

I'd tried to come up with the concept of safe and home. What I ended up was unconscious. Not nearly the same thing.

\-- --

"It's back and it brought a puppy."

"What IS that?"

"It looks like a Corgi."

"PUPPY!" declared Hermione, who might be very bright and bookish - but also a seven-year-old girl and quite capable of pouncing on cute little animals for a cuddle.

"Why would a dragon bring a Corgi here?" asked Mrs Granger.

"Maybe it's Hermione's familiar?" asked Mr Granger as they HAD been reading up on magical girls and witches and such. Cute animal companions were a trope for both groups after all.

Mrs Granger prodded the dragon with a foot. "Is it dead?"

"No, I don't think so," said Mr Granger, squatting down to get a better look. "It's breathing. Very heavily unconscious though."

"Series mascot?" asked Mrs Granger, turning her attention back to the Corgi.

The dog was now sitting next to Hermione and apparently reading a book alongside their daughter.

"Magical dog?" asked the father.

"I'd say that's pretty well certain, though it LOOKS rather normal," said Mrs Granger. "Wonder what it can do."

The dog looked up at her over the tops of his glasses, making her wonder where those had come from. "Raff."

_Crackle!_

"Did the dog just burp lightning?" asked Mrs Granger.

"I dub thee 'Thorgi'!" declared Mr Granger.

"Oh please no," said Mrs Granger, well knowing her husband's prediliction for puns.

The dog cocked his head briefly, then let out a short huffing noise that sounded agreeable.

"Thorgi it is," said Mister Granger, already planning a number of puns involving the name and/or an electrical motif.

"No throwing lightning in the house," said Mrs Granger, seeing all sorts of bad things happening.

"Unless it is to defend the household or protect Hermione or things like that," appended Mr Granger.

Thorgi cocked his head at that but didn't seem to disagree. Then again, they weren't entirely sure how much the dog understood of all that.

\-- --

"You can't just drop off some strange dog and expect us to take it in!" protested Emma Granger as I positioned myself so I could see and prepared to use my tail (which was long and I had used to wrap around branches in order to anchor myself a bit) to do a task my forelegs were entirely too short to properly do.

I trilled at her, just to let her know I was listening and waited for the buzzes and beeps to stop. This was an old computer, one they apparently used at home for correspondence and billing for their dental practice, but it had one thing I absolutely could use.

"What ARE you doing?" asked Dan Granger.

_Tap tap tap!_

A graphic interface had come up after the lengthy boot-up process, and I quickly found the word processor. The mouse being nearly as large as I was proved to be a struggle, but a lot of frustration could be addressed if this worked.

"[Didn't intend to stop here. Kind of an emergency teleport.]"

The two read the screen, looked at me, then at the screen again. Weird sort of synchronous behavior but they WERE married.

"You are a dragon. A dragon who knows how to use a computer," said Dan Granger, sounding amused for some reason.

"[It is very primitive, but it just makes it easier to use. Also frustrating.]"

"'Primitive'?" read Mrs Granger. "That's a new computer."

"[Did you really want to waste time talking about computers?]"

"No," admitted Dan Granger.

"[Good Enough. Your daughter is magical. I'm not sure if she's the Main Character or]"  
"[if she's the Love Interest or if she's just one of the Rangers.]"

"You're talking about character archetypes?" asked Dan Granger.

"[You've heard the phrase 'all the world is a stage'? From certain points of view there is a certain degree of accuracy for that.]"

"I refuse to believe that," stated Emma Granger.

"[That's your decision. You have that option.]"

"But you believe that?" asked Dan Granger.

"[When it comes to certain people and events and such. Yeah.]"

"So what's with the dog?"

"Urf," indicated Thorgi.

"[Thorgi. Fitting I suppose. Thorgi is a Celestial-aligned dog. Lightning-natured.]"  
"[He's just a pup, but he's a shisa if you understand the term. I believe in the]"  
"[West they are referred to as 'foo dogs' or such.]"

"I don't know those terms," confessed Dan Granger.

"[Guardian beasts. Chinese and Japanese mythology, I think.]"

"And you brought it here," stated Emma Granger.

"[As I said. Well, typed. This was an emergency teleport.]"

"Can I just boggle for a moment?" asked Dan Granger. "How weird our life has gotten. There is a dragon using his tail to type on a computer about our daughter being a magical girl with a lightning-wielding Pembroke Welsh Corgi as a Chinese guardian beast?"

"[Nicely summed up.]"

Dan Granger nodded.

"What if we decide our daughter won't get involved in all this magical stuff?" asked Emma Granger.

"[Most likely - the magical world will get involved with you. If you choose that]"  
"[course I'll wish you 'good luck' and leave. I think that kid with the lightning]"  
"[bolt scar on his forehead could use a familiar.]"

"What kid?" asked Emma Granger.

"[Boy your daughter's age. Guarded by wizards. Even if the people he was staying]"  
"[with stuck him in a cupboard. He's either the Hero or one of the main characters.]"

"So, this boy is my daughter's 'fated love interest'?" asked Dan Granger, apparently feeling an odd urge to find a shotgun and start polishing it.

"[Maybe. Probably. He's got the whole Distinguishing Feature thing going and the]"  
"[typical Abused Childhood trope.]"

"Boys are icky," stated seven-year-old Hermione Granger. Though she sounded more thoughtful than condemning.

\-- --

Hermione Granger understood a number of things despite being seven years old.

Her parents had gotten a set of videos from the local store dealing with witches, a few more of those Japanese series dealing with magical girls, and even a few tapes of "Bewitched" and "I Dream of Genie" among other things. At school, her usual nonfiction choices from the library had been supplemented with things from the fiction section.

She was handling this the way she had always handled her schoolwork. Study study study.

If this was all correct, and a dragon showing up made a good argument for the whole magic angle, then there was some indication on how things would go. There were a few stories which indicated that instead of a "Damsel In Distress" role that she could opt for the arguably more dangerous but also more satisfying role of Action Girl.

Nothing like those "bodice-ripper" paperbacks that her mother read every so often. 

Now she had another word to look up. Whatever a 'trope' was - it sounded useful.

\-- --

I was pretty sure what I had here.

To me, the way the scar-kid had been isolated and forced to live in a small cupboard (unless he had that fear of large spaces thing) with that distinguishing scar and wild hair - probably the main character. Or at least A main character. Probably the protaganist and only a slight chance he was the antagonist.

If I teleported completely blind I ended up outside the local space/time. If I was at least on some level worried about my probable mission and duties to assist some Hero in their path to success, which was almost always a worry in the back of my mind, I ended up teleporting to someone who was in some way connected to the local plotline. And there WAS a local plotline - I'd seen enough of this sort of thing before to recognize it.

So Hermione was either the Love Interest (them being the same age) or was a Plucky Sidekick or something similar.

Having watched way too damn many young kids fumbling around with their feelings and the whole "will/won't he/she" and the frequent "tragically the two never addressed their feelings until it was too late" - I was providing an Early Excuse. At least I think so. It could be the teleports were being influenced by Outside, but I was pretty sure that Toltiir was nowhere nearby.

Unless the god of mischief was only letting me think that. Nah. Couldn't be.

So the little girl was most likely the Destined Love. Or else Destined Friend-Zoned. Which, quite frankly as I'd been in THAT last boat a few times, sucked as badly as a black hole in a binary star system if you asked me.

If you have ever been in a situation where you've watched two young people who cared deeply about each other, facing great peril, but unable to get the bloody words out - you've probably felt the same thing. If you have ever seen said young couple die horribly with a possible final gesture towards the other part, you'd know that feeling the next time you encountered a "Can't Get It Out" couple. My memory was still swiss-cheesed but I could remember five freaking times.

So the seven year old kids were getting hints. Maybe it wouldn't do any good but I'd have at least tried SOMETHING.

I'd also seen the whole tragedy because the hero, sidekick, hangers-on, didn't get any damn training but had to discover their needed-to-survive skills while fighting for their lives. Which works fine in worlds with what we in the business called "Plot Armor" for obvious reasons. In worlds that didn't have that mechanism you usually ended up going through several heroes until finding one that had a chance of surviving the first few battles.

I was stymied here though. The parents of Hermione Granger had already expressed their desire to keep their kid safe by denying her any training or equipment that made her chance of surviving things later on greater. Part of the irony of human existence.

Scarface, whose name I was momentarily drawing a blank on though I was fairly sure those wizard-types had mentioned it, was in a hostile environment and was living in a closet so I probably couldn't smuggle anything to him from my inventory.

Those two girls I'd popped in on had been another hostile environment. I likely couldn't do anything there either.

Not sure who else was involved but I was pretty sure someone would be. This was a typical Fantasy adventure from the feel of it, so I was guessing there would be a fellowship of seven. There were rules involved in such things, patterns that human nature and other factors formed that could become tropes in literature of various types.

Magic in this world followed certain patterns as well, and if I could figure out the underlying pattern then I could start working out better ways of preparing the heroes for their quest.

IF the parents and such would let me.

Though if "Thorgi" looked to be working out - perhaps I could go that route with Companion Beasts or Familiars or something.

\-- --

[Sundrake, Hatchling]  
[Tiny dragon, Neutral Good]  
[Armor Class: 17]  
[Hit Points: 32]  
[Speed: 30, Fly: 60, Swim 30]  
[Str:17 Dex:14 Con:15 Int:13 Wis:13 Cha:12]  
[Saving Throws: Dex+2, Con+2, Wis+2, Cha+2]  
[Skill: Perception+2, Stealth+4]  
[Damage Immunities: Fire]  
[Senses: Aura Sight 10]  
[Languages: Draconic, Celestial]  
[Challenge: 2 (450xp)]  
[Bite: (melee) 2]  
[Claw: (melee) 1]  
[Poison: Paralytic 1/2 hour (DC 11)]  
[Dimension Door 4/day, Plane Shift 1/day, Telepathy: Limited]  
[Skills: Stealth-1, Haggling-1, Binge Eating-1]  
[Breath Weapon: Celestial Fire 1d6+2, double damage vs undead/demonic, purifying]  
[Spell Use: Sundrakes have access to Clerical spells of the Sun/Light, Protection, or Healing dominions. (choose two)]  
[Sundrakes inhabit the plane of Celestia where they act as messengers and couriers for Beings of Power.]  
[At Hatchling stage, their powers and abilities are severely curtailed.]

\-- --

[Dog, Elemental (Corgi)]  
[Small beast, varies by element type]  
[Armor Class: 8]  
[Hit Points: 25]  
[Speed: 30]  
[Str: 6, Dex:12, Con:13, Int:10, Wis:12, Cha:16]  
[Saving Throws: Wis+2]  
[Damage Immunities: 1/2 damage to specified element, 1.5x damage from opposing element]  
[Senses: Empathy, Detect Good/Evil]  
[Challenge: 2 (450xp)]  
[Bite: 1d4, Headbutt/Pounce: 1d4 chance to stun]  
[Elemental Bolt 1d6, Bark 1d4 subdual]  
[Dogs of varying species found on the Celestial planes bordering elemental planes or in places where elemental]  
[energies frequently discharge. Fire, Lightning, Frost, Shadow, Water, Earth, and Wind elements have]  
[been noted in the past. Each element is stronger against some elements than against others.] [Thorgi is Lightning-element and weak against Earth-element. His elemental attack is a lightning blast with]  
[a range of ten feet and can be set for subdual/stun damage.]  
[Thorgi, the Dog of Thunder. Strong vs Lightning, Weak vs Water

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> still not entirely sure about going this route, but i don't think i've run across it before - which is at least something considering the sheer amount of HP fanfic out there.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> of dragons & cats & dogs and things that go bump in the cosmic night

One Floo Over - Error Path  
Chapter Six: Cats & Dogs & Dragons  
by Nimodes  
\-- --

Disclaimer: warning. disclaimer not found. Another dragon ate it.

\-- --

I had gone deliberately this time and the plan was to observe before I made a move.

This universe was on a Celestial line (Bytopia) and bordered the Elemental planes in several areas due to the nature of the Planes.

So the trappers I had rescued Thorgi from were observed (and I leveled up stealth twice stalking them) and I determined that they were actually planar travellers who went around and captured beasts from various other universes and then sold them in one of those Disappearing Stores.

You've heard tales of those, of course. The shop, or circus or vendor or something like that, that appears overnight and disappears just as mysteriously. Usually selling items that are "monkey paws" in that the buyer really needed to beware. Not all, but definitely a good percentage.

So I followed them carefully. Magical dimension-spanning exotic animal hunters. As I was currently a dragon, this was kind of like a sheep stalking the wolves.

[Stealth has levelled up! Stealth-4. You can now pass over pressure plates and similar traps]  
[without triggering them.]

[You have learned a skill through practice! Observation-1 has been learned.]  
[Observation has bonuses due to Draconic Senses and Magical Sensitivity.]

Okay, that was handy. Hephaestus be praised for creating this User Interface, and I'd offer a few words to that effect when I wasn't sneaking around a very dangerous group of criminals.

Team Rocket was essentially what this group was - if you went with elemental beasts and such. Same team dynamic - a man and a woman who argued a fair amount and seemed borderline competent with frequent border crossings. Differences appeared to be how often they crossed the border, that the woman was some sort of tiefling and the guy seemed to have giant-blood of some kind.

Also they were capturing more than just pets.

This was problematic. It had knocked me out for over a day just carrying a Pembrooke Welsh Corgi puppy because that was twice what I massed. There was no way I would be able to escape with some of them. Even if I just escaped with one, they'd likely know and be prepared for me next time.

Maybe...

It was simple enough to use claws to score through a dry tree branch, leaving just enough to hold it in place. The tricky part was the whole 'not making any noise' bit of course. Not to mention having to do it five times.

In one case, the branch began to sag at the break before I had managed to get down the tree's trunk and into the grass.

I managed to get to the correct area and waited.

Both tiefling-girl and half-giant drew weapons at the branch making a cracking noise. Also something not expected from a Team Rocket sort of group. The half-giant had some oversized bazooka sort of thing that I'd mistaken for a water barrel or something. The tiefling had a sword, one with runes that glowed blue. Neither filled me with confidence about what would happen if they hit me. That gun had an aperature big enough that I could fit inside.

The sword was likewise concerning. Looked like it had an elemental affinity to lightning. Hard to read all of the runes unless she set the thing aside angled to where I could get a good look and I was Celestial not Infernal. Related languages but with some significant differences. Two-handed sword with a blade that was twice my length.

Yeah, I was a dragon and could vomit a fire hot enough to melt steel. I was also very small with a thin build. Taking on either of those alone was going to end up with me either killed or captured. If captured, I was likely to be in a cage and sold off. I had no doubt those cages were enspelled to prevent anyone inside from just teleporting out.

One tree branch fell. The two were alert but hadn't reacted much beyond having weapons at hand.

My foreclaws were small and thin enough to fit within the lock of one mechanism. I reached in, manipulated the interior, and popped the lock quietly.

The creature within was small and catlike, who caught my gaze and my wink and nodded. It quietly went off into the brush.

Okay, that was going to have to be sufficient.

The female of the two took out a small device and pointed it in the direction of the broken branch. She slowly began turning with the device pointed outward.

Crap. That had to be some kind of sensor device. Time to go.

I zigged and zagged and went away from the camp a good distance before I took a deep breath and opened a space/time hole.

The recurrent problem showed up. In order to rip those time/space holes - I had to breathe out a blast of fire. Once through, I had no air. When I reached a point to re-emerge, I had to blast another hole. Having enough air to do all of the above was a problem, and stopping and wheezing at the emergence point as I tried to fill oxygen-starved lungs was yet another problem.

Yeah, it was a right royal pain.

At which point something hit me as I was exiting space/time. Make that two things. One of which was solid and seemed to be radiating concern?

Add bleeding out as I flew a bit then exited with last bit of breath.

Cue gulping air and trying to hold my insides inside with my foreclaws.

"Should we get a vet?" asked Daniel Granger.

I scratched out a single word in the dirt. "[Dragonsleep.]"

"That's not very helpful..." said Daniel Granger before stopping as he thought of something. "Like in 'Dungeons & Dragons'?"

If I were not very nearly bisected at the moment, and lacking in verbal communication skills, I would have pounced on this opening. As it was, I merely nodded and tapped the side of my snout with a foreclaw.

"Wait, seriously?" asked Emma Granger. "One of those books had something right?"

I nodded again but things were getting a bit much at that point.

"Okay, so to be clear - you're going to sleep for years and then wake up mostly healed but likely ravenous?" asked Daniel Granger.

I managed to nod again, but that bit of effort would have had me throwing up if I had anything to throw up. And I wasn't nearly bisected and all.

"He's not supposed to be that color, is he?" asked Emma Granger.

"No, I don't think so," admitted Dan Granger. "Too bad we don't have a cleric."

My eyes opened. Oh. I'd quite forgotten in the whole haze of extreme pain thing.

[Cure Light Wounds.]

Unfortunately, everything went straight to black from that effort.

\-- --

There were flashes of things. People I didn't know. Some I did from my time with the Reality Relief Office: Angelios the Redemption Seeker. Sasai Nightblade. Daedel the Sorter. Fenris Wolf. Bastet of Heliopolis. Regulus Moon.

There were brief sensations. Being carried. Heat. Cold. Pain. Stiffness.

[Rank Up. Hatchling to Juvenile.]  
[Beginning Upgrade.]

What did THAT mean?

Oh. Something was happening. Was this a memory?

\-- --

"What do you mean I failed?" I asked. "Wasn't my mission to leave a door unlocked?"

"Look, remember your tests? It was all a virtual reality set-up," said Regulus. He leaned across the desk. "Your 'Labors'? Your little 'happily ever after'? All a sort of virtual reality thing, using a mechanism set up by specialists in illusioncraft. You failed. The Divine Intervention Office rejected your license. You might make it into the Reality Relief Office, but it will take quite a bit of time."

"This isn't some sort of joke, i s it? I mean - Loki IS involved according to this," I said as I indicated a name on the rejection notice.

"Loki knows you've been marked by Toltiir, and Loki despises Toltiir. Apparently it has something to do with that eight-legged horse Odin trots out every so often. I don't know the details and it's best I don't." Regulus shook his head. "The various divines can hold a grudge a very long time. Still, you've been soul-forged into a dragon by a god of mischief after your third death. That part was real and apparently the result of someone getting impatient or frustrated or both. You'll tend to be a dragon in realities where dragons exist and are more than big lizards."

"Is that a good thing?" I asked.

\-- --

I'd gone to sleep in 1985. When I woke up, it was to discover that I had a layer of dust on me. Going through the Granger home (snagging four cinnamon buns and sticking my head under the faucet in order to assuage the gnawing hungry bit) led me to a calendar. That paper I'd snagged in mid-air had been May 27 1985 but had been a little old as it turned out.

With everything that had happened, I wasn't sure how long it had been but it had been at least December of that year when I'd returned to the Granger home. Now, according to this calendar at least, it was August of 1991. So. I'd been asleep six years.

I was also roughly twice the size I'd been earlier. Instead of roughly the size of a soda can, I was now more liter-size soda bottle sized.

Was that what that message meant? I was now "Juvenile" instead of "Hatchling"? Wasn't there supposed to be a "Very Young" category or was I misremembering?

Is this the real life? Or is it fantasy? Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality?

I shook my head. That way lies madness. Start worrying about whether reality is reality and whether you're in an illusion or virtual reality or whatever and you'd constantly be second-guessing everything. Best to muddle on as best you can.

I had a sudden image of some freaking-huge guy showing up at one point and getting a bucket of something to Mister Granger and a few instructions on food?

Sure enough, in the dog bed I'd woken up in, there was a large wooden spoon that looked as if something had chewed on it.

Well, this was certainly interesting. In the case of 'this' - which was on the word processor that the Grangers had in their home. Which was actually an article for some sort of periodical.

Apparently someone had come to the idea of dogmail as Thorgi could 'Apparate' (which I thought probably meant teleport) from one place to another in a bolt of lightning.

Hermione had been in class, a class of non-magic-wielders, when Thorgi had popped up in a bolt of lightning. Which had led to a confession that the Cardiff Dragon was sleeping at her home. Which had led to a certain degree of interest in things in the Granger home from teachers, biologists, crackpots, bureaucrats, and finally a group of wizards who just went around with memory-altering spells.

Also apparently, the last group had messed things up a bit somehow. Not really surprising considering human brain architecture and all the fiddly bits and that their 'Obliviate' spell apparently included some sort of suggestibility factor to cover the missing memories with something else.

Dan and Emma Granger were now apparently convinced that Hermione had been formally engaged to Harry Potter, though they were not at all sure when. Dan Granger was convinced it was an arrangement between families dating back to the time of the Magna Carta. Emma Granger was pretty darn sure she'd made the arrangement with her childhood friend whose name she was completely blank on. On her case though - she did actually have the whole 'memory charm' culprit correct but with the wrong result. At least that was my take on the various notes - she might actually have had such a friend and an arrangement like that between them.

The magic here was weird. I briefly wondered if there was some form of the Akashic Record here. It, in many magical universes, was basically what filled in the blanks when you were throwing magic around. When you turned a prince into a frog and back it was that mechanism which allowed the caster to not be concerned about the differences in anatomy and brain size and such. In universes where something like Stargate and anything like those Percy Jackson books crossed - this would actually frequently be a mechanism much along the line of a set of computers sitting in a pocket universe outside normal space/time.

Which was fairly close to the Yggdrasil system actually - in sort of the way a 1970s pocket calculator was similar to the semi-organic computer systems available in 2340.

Hermione appeared to have been hit with a couple of memory charms too. At least that was my take on why she thought she needed a proper magical girl wand in one note and then admitted that she was writing things down in case those Obliviators came by again.

She also likened Obliviators to Daleks for some reason. I didn't even know this Reality had Daleks. Those were quite dangerous, I'd have to coach the kids on high-energy shielding spells.

Ah, Thorgi had ended up going with someone named Hagrid who'd been the one to come up with some sort of nourishing gruel that had been fed me. I'd apparently also been taken three times to some location called "the Forbidden Forest" only to end up back at the Grangers.

On the other hand, my passenger on that last trip had apparently been the cat-thing I'd freed from its cage and it had grown. And was apparently also something which had grown as Hermione made remarks about her kitty getting big enough that she was now riding it like a pony.

She'd named it "Crookshanks" for some odd reason. She didn't explain why.

There was a magic that not only erased memories but erased evidence of those memories, but apparently the caster had to be aware of the sorts of things that were involved. So photographs would be altered, but unless they knew what a computer was and what word processors were - those would not be affected by the spell.

Which was handy for the Grangers in this instance. They might not remember Hagrid but they could check their computers and find out a missing day actually wasn't missing.

Also apparently, if the Obliviator was distracted by something during the casting process - it could influence the modified memories thing. Which might be a factor behind crop circles, alien abductions, UFO sightings, at least some elections, the cancellation of Firefly, lost socks, some sports referee decisions, and many other things about this world that made little or no sense. A Wizard Did It. Or a witch. Or both. While trying to cover up the existence of wizards.

All this was beside the point. Apparently I had been sleepwalking and returning to the dog bed. Three times according to this.

There was Thorgi the lightning-hurling Pembrooke Welsh Corgi.  
There was Crookshanks the shadow-element Savannah. Which was apparently not what Crookshanks was but apparently Crookshanks most resembled that species out of the other varieties of cat. Except that apparently didn't have whatever pattern that Savannah were supposed to have, and was instead a sort of midnight-blue in color. And big enough that Hermione Granger, at age ten from the description, had taken to riding him around the neighborhood.

Wait, wasn't there some crap about keeping magic secret - hence the use of that memory charm?

Ah, shadow-element. So probably stealth-capable.

From the way she was wording her entries after she'd been Obliviated - having a pony-sized cat was absolutely great. Having a pony-sized cat she could ride around on while reading went beyond mere 'great' into 'greatest thing ever' levels.

That brought me back around to sleepwalking during a dragonsleep. I suppose it made a certain degree of sense in that even in hibernation animals shifted around a bit because of things like circulation and respiration which slowed down but never really stopped. It was a rather big difference between hibernating and dead after all. Dragons tended to bury themselves in things like treasure or ice or other substances, whereas I had apparently buried myself in blankets. I was not at all sure that when a dragon slept it could go off and take a dump in the middle of the night, though again that made a certain degree of sense when you thought about it. A dragon in the hibernation cycle might very well unbury themselves in order to satisfy a bit of hunger or thirst or need to relieve oneself before going back to their lair and settling back in.

Perhaps I hadn't heard of it because dragons tended to avoid people when bedding down, while people tended to avoid dragons period? Dragons didn't want to be disturbed whilst hibernating and people of whatever species generally didn't want to be eaten.

So, perhaps I went off and used the toilet during those three trips? Certainly made sense if one considered the possibility. Hopefully I hadn't eaten anyone's cat or car or anything of the sort.

Hmmm. Actually, I was getting a bit peckish and had an odd craving for aluminum and steel. Well, I was a growing dragon so that explained that.

After I found and ate a can of tuna fish, finding the metal a bit tough (other than some bits that tasted off and were spat into the trash receptacle) but largely palatable. The tuna itself was quite tasty and a lovely change of pace from rat or pigeon.

I wandered their house for a bit, wondering where everyone was, when I finally ran across an envelope that smelled faintly of magic.

Unfortunately it had been opened and only had Hermione Granger, her address, and the seal in the back proclaiming it was from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry.

It also tasted a bit bleh, but as soon as I realized I was eating it - I stopped myself. 

I think I'd have to see if one of the wizard-types could throw a spell or two on my food, it added a bit of flavor.

I went back and checked the most recent entry on the computer.

Hmmmm. This could be a bit of a problem. Sleepwalking was bad enough.

[Sundrake, Juvenile]  
[Tiny dragon, Neutral Good]  
[Armor Class: 17]  
[Hit Points: 42]  
[Speed: 30, Fly: 60, Swim 30]  
[Str:17 Dex:16 Con:15 Int:13 Wis:14 Cha:14]  
[Saving Throws: Dex+2, Con+2, Wis+2, Cha+2]  
[Skill: Perception+4, Stealth+4]  
[Damage Immunities: Fire]  
[Senses: Aura Sight 10, Acute Senses]  
[Languages: Draconic, Celestial]  
[Challenge: 2 (450xp)]  
[Bite: (melee) 2-4]  
[Claw: (melee) 1-4/1-4]  
[Poison: Paralytic 1/2 hour (DC 11)]  
[Dimension Door 4/day, Plane Shift 1/day, Telepathy: Limited]  
[Skills: Stealth-4, Haggling-1, Binge Eating-1, Observation-1]  
[Breath Weapon: Celestial Fire 1d6+2, double damage vs undead/demonic, purifying]  
[Spell Use: Sundrakes have access to Clerical spells of the Sun/Light, Protection, or Healing dominions. (choose two)]  
[Sundrakes inhabit the plane of Celestia where they act as messengers and couriers for Beings of Power.]  
[At Hatchling stage, their powers and abilities are severely curtailed.]

A/N: i was very unsure about using D&D-style creatures for further distancing from the canon storyline. i was seriously considering using pokemon instead as they could fit in. If i did that, my initial thought was:  
Harry - Pikachu or Eevee  
Hermione - Litleo or Ralts  
Luna - Hoothoot or Abra  
Neville - Growlithe or Chespin  
Ron - Tyrunt or none


	7. Chapter 7

One Floo Over - Error Path  
Chapter Seven: Train & Dragons  
by Nimodes  
\-- --

Disclaimer: warning. fanfiction, the writing of a story set in someone else's playground.

\-- --

It was not a dark and stormy night. A shot did not ring out, and most certainly a pirate ship had not appeared on the horizon.

Well, except for a small one, and that was three doors down from Number 4 Privet Drive. It was owned by a small boy named Alexander Whitfield of the tender age of six, though he would gleefully tell you he was almost seven. The pirate ship was, in fact, a model floating in a small inflatable pool. As the small boy and the smaller pirate ship have absolutely no impact on the narrative at all, he will not be appearing or mentioned hereafter.

It was in fact a bright and sunny morning, of exactly the sort of bright and sunny that leads night workers and the hungover to hiss at the sun and withdraw to darker locations. It was a bit cool, not so cold as to require a jacket and promising to warm up quite a bit by noon.

The family Granger had gone off to do some last-minute preparations at Diagon Alley for their trip to Hogwarts in a few short days.

I left a note explaining my absence and that I thanked them for providing a dry shelf on the back of their downstairs cupboard for me to take my brief little nap.

I went hunting thereafter. Still feeling a bit of an appetite, wanting something with a fair amount of steel and perhaps some nice fruit. Have to have a balanced diet for a growing dragon after all.

\-- --

"Let's see," said Dan Granger, glancing over the parchment. "Three sets of black work robes."

"Got that," said Emma Granger. "Wouldn't want to wear these in summer myself."

"I'm sure they have spells to keep them cool," stated Hermione.

"One pointed black hat," read off Dan.

"Same place, and I think it's wool. Going to be awfully warm unless these get air-conditioning spells added too," pointed out Emma.

"One pair of protective gloves," said Daniel Granger. "Those were pretty pricey."

"Yes, well, dragon hide," said Emma. "I'm more concerned with whatever Hermione's going to be handling that requires something like that."

"That IS concerning," said Dan, being a bit of a protective father. "I also hope these dragons aren't intelligent. Skinning intelligent beings in order to use their hides doesn't speak well of a society. Winter cloak with silver fastenings, got that. Uhm. Required books, check. Wand, check. Cauldron, also check. Glass vials, check. Telescope, brass. Scales, brass. Do you suppose with the silver and brass and such that the stories about cold iron disrupting spells might have some validity?"

"It's possible," said Hermione after considering that.

"Owl or cat or toad," continued Dan Granger.

There was a coughing snarl that caused the nearest members of the crowd to draw back a bit.

"Crookshanks said 'check'," informed the girl riding what looked like a fairly sizable panther.

Dan Granger looked around at the crowd and nodded. Wizards and witches they might be, but when facing a girl riding a panther they were all both fascinated and a bit frightened. "Right. Technically a cat I suppose. Well, we've got everything. If you would, Crookshanks?"

The panther made a coughing/snarl noise and a nearby shadow darkened to absolute black. Placing hands on the shoulders of the beast, two muggles and a witch followed the panther into that blackness which swallowed them up without a trace.

\-- --

"Arf," said the little defenseless-looking dog.

"No," said Vernon Dursley, holding the chair in front of him like he was some sort of lion tamer and facing a terrible beast. "I am not footing the bill for the boy to go off to some freaky school-for-freaks."

"Arf," argued the dog.

"I am NOT freaking out, you miserable mutt!" indicated Vernon Dursley.

_CRACKLE!_

Vernon Dursley whimpered slightly as the happy-looking Pembrooke Welsh Corgi, quite similar in appearance to the Queen's dogs, abruptly had little electrical discharges running along his coat. "No. I am not-"

The Corgi turned his attention to the television.

"Blast it, don't fry my telly!" declared Vernon Dursley.

Thorgi wagged his tail briskly.

"Vernon, don't provoke the dog," said Petunia, showing a bit of sense. "He'll zap you, we'll have to replace all the fuses and the telly and you just paid the license fee. And you know if you attack the dog, someone's going to show up out of the blue and start talking about animal cruelty."

"Well..." said Vernon, eyeing the window and the dog.

"Like the last four times," said Petunia.

Vernon sighed. "Fine. Well, at least both of them will be OUT of our house for nine months."

"Arf."

"Arf."

"I think at this point he just wants out, actually," pointed out Petunia.

"I can dream, can't I?" asked Vernon, punctuating that with an eye-roll.

\-- --

"I can't believe I ate the whole thing," I stated, looking at the remains of a junker. Honestly, even I didn't know where I'd put it all.

As I had spoken in dragon-shape and in Draconic, the owner of the junkyard just glanced up at where I was perched without understanding a word I had just said to him.

Yeah, it looked as if I'd eaten a good portion of a fairly old British car.

"That there was a 'Morgan +8' and I'd charge you if the good parts hadn't already been stripped out," said the owner. "Well, that and ye don't seem to have any money. It was wrecked back in '83 I think. Total loss. I can't believe you ate the axles though. Little fella like you."

I trilled an agreement. There wasn't much left of the car, and what there was looked as if it had been chewed on.

How did I even digest this stuff?

"If ye are gonna poop up anything, use the corner," said the owner, pointing. "Nice they don't smell much, being lumps of metal and all, but that acid smell is pretty nasty for the first hour or so."

Okay, that sounded disgusting. And handy to keep in mind.

"Ye gonna finish that, or do I slag it?" asked the owner.

"Meh," I managed and managed to push the chewed up remains of what had once been a fairly nice automobile in the direction of the junkyard owner.

As I did, I considered my size compared to the remaining chassis and realized something. I was using Reinforce, which was either a spell or an application of magical energy depending on who you were consulting. At least four realities used the term "warlock" to describe those whose primary use of magic was to Reinforce their bodies, but if you used chi or internal physical energies there were other terms and some wouldn't even consider you a wizard at all.

It was tricky though, other than at the lowest and most instinctive level. Too much energy and things could go boom. If you'd practiced a lot with it, you got a lot stronger than was normally physically possible with considerations like mass and density and such. Also if you'd used it a lot, you had a "vessel" that was normally stronger and tougher than was strictly normal. This was the core about the whole "being taught martial arts by a dragon" trope out of oriental myth.

I had to wonder if I'd taught Hermione while I was asleep. Certainly it wouldn't be that far a gap from sleep-teleporting and eating a wrecked car.

I glanced up at the sign of the junkyard, noting a little sign that had been tacked on that stated this was a dragon-spotting station and decided to be all diplomatic about it and not mention it. Besides, if I did actually eat a good chunk of even a wrecked car - the guy did deserve some bit of recompense.

Nah. It would require someone really bored, magically potent, and quite possibly bullied to even try figuring it out. Not likely Hermione would qualify at all.

\-- --

Dudley Dursley watched from concealment.

He knew better than to attack the Corgi. His gang knew not to attack the Corgi or Harry when the Corgi was around. Naturally, they'd adapted their tactics to do their "Harry Hunting" game only at locations that a dog would not be allowed. Otherwise the damn dog would appear in a freaking thunderbolt and then proceed to zap the bloody hell out of them.

Except things had taken a terribly bad turn after one of the times that dragon had shown up. You also didn't attack the "Dragon of Cardiff" because dragons were an endangerous species or something. And they had sharp teeth that could rip apart a cricket bat like you was offering 'em a treat instead of threatening them.

Since then, Harry had been exercising while doing chores. Sometimes the boy had looked like he'd fallen asleep with his eyes open there but you could feel something kinda off in the air around him.

Then Harry had started taking hits without apparently feeling it much. Then he'd started hitting back. Hard. Then doing moves like in one of those lame kung phooey movies they did on the telly every so often. And when Harry hit something like that, things broke. First it was branches and then rocks and at one point Harry had hit the sidewalk. He'd put a bloody damn CRATER in the bloody damn sidewalk!

One member of Dudley's gang had taken a nice chunk of pipe he'd nicked from a construction site and had hit Harry with it when Harry wasn't looking. Harry had apparently noticed and backhanded Tim hard enough that Tim had bounced off the wall.

Then Harry had mumbled something about being blamed and had held a hand over Tim's broken arm and caused the bone to fix itself.

So Harry was not being hunted by Dudley and his gang anymore. No. Some people would say he was too dumb to learn anything but they were wrong. If he could get away with something, fine. If not, there weren't no point in getting busted up now was there?

\-- --

He got out of the cupboard a lot more now. Had to exercise the dog after all, and the dog in question being a perfectly respectable-looking Corgi had somewhat mollified the Dursleys.

Though Harry had suspicions that it was not a coincidence the dog in question had blown out every fuse in the entire block just before Uncle Vernon had suddenly begun being a lot more tolerant of Harry being away from the house with the dog. Something more had happened, but as long as it got him away from the Dursleys it was all good - right?

The dragon had shown up a few times and seemed to have a "someone else's problem" thing going on. People noticed it, but it tended to be "oh what a cute little dragon" sort of notice and not the "it's a bloody dragon run for your lives" kind of thing. Even if the dragon was considerably smaller than the Corgi if you figured mass and not length - you'd think a few would do the "scream and run" thing.

He'd noticed the dragon tended to mumble while asleep, and that while nobody else around him seemed able to understand the little guy - he could. It was difficult though, kind of like speaking to someone from back in the hills of Scotland and all "het up" or something. The accent was horrible.

A garter snake had been kind enough to explain a bit of that to him, which had been another huge surprise.

Maybe he was related to Saint Patrick and could talk to snakes due to that. That'd be right brilliant, it would.

As it was, he was getting a lot better at this 'Reinforce' thing.

He typically had a Reinforce going making him tougher and stronger, but he'd also discovered (during one of his walks and a corner store that sold Chinese food) these awfully-dubbed Chinese kung-fu flicks. And one of the things that had brought to him was the whole leaping around like you weighed practically nothing.

There'd been a couple of false-starts. At one point Harry figured he'd tripled his weight instead of decreasing it and discovered that whole "feel the burn" thing the Physical Education instructor had been on about. Eventually he'd gotten it though and had found the whole "leaping up to the roof" thing and landing as if you weighed hardly anything at all. If he hadn't accidently scared off Dudley and his gang during one of their "Harry-hunts" by reinforcing his strength and putting a hole in the sidewalk.

On the other hand, he'd been nine at the time, and punching the sidewalk and having the sidewalk break was AWESOME! And it had apparently caused the whole "Harry Hunting" game to be given up as likely to be extremely painful to the hunters. On the other hand, he was afraid someone was going to make him pay for it.

\-- --

I was a dragon. A fairly typical one of my breed, from what I understand. Which is to say that I had the perfectly normal six limbs if you didn't count my long neck or slightly longer tail. The tail was actually somewhat prehensile in that I could wrap it around a tree limb, even if the last bit of it was hardened with plates of horn material. The forelimbs ended in claws which were rather more prehensile than the tail and were in fact perfectly sized for grasping a large cookie between them and bringing the morsel to my mouth.

White chocolate with cranberries, if you must know.

I was thin but not quite serpentine in general shape, because dragons are neither mammals nor reptiles but of a completely different phyla altogether. I think that was phyla or phylum. Might have been class, but with that word having so many possible definitions wouldn't it be easier to go with phyla? Have to check with a biology text to be sure but as I was currently eating a cookie while sitting on a tree branch outside the Granger home - that was a secondary concern for another time altogether.

The idea that, despite being a dragon, that I was somehow cute enough to be able to cadge free food from a vendor was still bothering me a bit. As a member of the Reality Relief Office I was pretty sure I'd been killed off and reborn in different forms a dozen times or so. I'd never been "cute" and would have thought it quite impossible for that term to be applied to me.

But then some people thought prinnies were cute so perhaps it was just that you couldn't account for individual tastes.

So, there I was, munching happily on a cookie. Perhaps that was a natural thing of dragons in this world? I'd have to consult some other dragons to see if that was the case. I couldn't see a dragon sitting on a pile of cookies as his dragonhoard though. Cookies would go stale and tend to burn to crisps if you hiccupped or otherwise let loose a bit of flame.

So it would make a pleasant image, but was just too impractical.

Cookies, in case one should be curious, generally taste a great deal better than a car's fender.

I took flight as soon as the cookie was finished, feeling a bit more sluggish in my movements than prior to my nap. Made sense I suppose - my mass was well over double what it had been. While my magical nature could provide lift, mass wasn't negated and I couldn't imitate a hummingbird. I could hover though - that was a simple matter of spreading my wings and magic and staying in place. Except if it was windy, I quickly found that a strong wind could and would push me around if I was simply trying to hover. There was probably a trick to it, but I didn't know who to ask about such a thing.

The feeling of magic building up distracted me from my admittedly going-nowhere train of thought.

Hermione and her parents appeared, with the child riding a tiger whose fur was dark blue and black instead of the usual coloration. This then must be "Crookshanks" - a shadow-element celestial beast.

"Well, up from your nap at last?" asked Daniel Granger.

I admitted that was the case, for all that it sounded like a hissing and birdsong.

"(Well met, young dragon,)" said Crookshanks.

"(Ah,)" I replied. "(Adopted the young miss?)"

"(Child needs someone responsible to make sure she eats and exercises and sleeps.)" Crookshanks coughed a tigerish sort of laugh. "(Once I caught her trying to eat a plate - her attention was entirely on one of her books.)"

THAT sounded quite plausible from what I'd seen of the bushy-haired girl.

"(I shall accompany her to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in a few days,)" Crookshanks informed me proudly. "(Bast knows the girl would probably starve to death if she found a decent library.)"

"(Oh? That's what it is called? Interesting.)" The name sounded familiar but I couldn't immediately place it.

"(How so?)" asked Crookshanks, who apparently had the typical feline attitude of "it is what it is" and ignoring details that weren't of immediate concern.

"(It is not simply 'Hogwarts School Of Magic',)" I pointed out. "(That means there are OTHER types of magic they know about, but don't pursue academically.)"

"(Whatever,)" indicated Crookshanks with feline disdain.

I blinked and considered that we were now being stared at by the girl and her parents. Who no doubt heard a lot of feline noises from Crookshanks and various trills and warbles from me. "(Have to find out if there's a 'Speak With Animals' spell Hermione can learn. It'd solve a number of problems later on.)"

"I suppose that means you won't be bringing any strange animals around like you did when you were asleep?" asked Daniel Granger, sounding quite hopeful.

Of course that made me wonder exactly what had been going on while I was asleep.

Crookshanks just smirked at me, which really did NOT set my mind at ease.

\-- --

There had been a simple enough choice. Hermione had Crookshanks. Harry had Thorgi. This was a problem as the Hogwarts letter said that students were allowed a "cat or owl or toad" which were apparently all associated with witches or magic in British stories. Cats were able to go anywhere and act as if they owned the place because they were cats damnit. Owls were used for mail, which meant you ended up with owl droppings all over the place and that stuff could be pretty nasty. Toads were somewhat resistant to magic and poison, but I didn't see a lot of uses for them beside that.

The real problem was the restriction to ONE animal companion.

I got a look at Hermione's letter and Harry's while we looked about for a Platform 9 3/4. Which was apparently between Platforms 9  & 10, but was NOT 9 1/2. Which indicated to me that perhaps the wizarding world had people who were not mathematically inclined.

I noted the column that had a particularly strong set of wards and enchantments on it, then slipped off of Harry's shoulder to circle it a couple of times. Damn limited vocabulary.

"That must be it," said Harry.

"Indeed," said Hermione, before turning back towards her parents and giving both of them hugs.

While Hermione was having a personal moment, Harry was turning his full attention to the pillar. "How do you suppose we get through?"

"(Well,)" I speculated aloud, looking over the tangle of spells. "(Looks like intent-based and a speed-filter. You have to intend to go through and you have to go at better than a slow walk. There's at least seven layers of spells all tangled up here.)"

"'Seven'?" asked Harry.

"(Yeah. I... You understood me?)"

"I can make out most of what you say, sometimes," said Harry, glancing up at me from where I was clinging to the bricks. "I can talk to snakes and you're a couple of stages removed apparently."

"(Huh. Oh yeah. I think I remember something like that happening,)" I admitted as I tried to think back on our first meeting. "(It looks to me as if they did the original spellwork back when this section was built and they just added sections to it over the years.)"

"I see," said Harry.

"(You've got an owl and a dog,)" I noted. "(Letter said one animal and it didn't mention dogs.)"

"Since Thorgi can lightning-teleport, I can send him home if anyone says something," said Harry. "Well, here goes."

I watched Harry disappear into the column, followed a few moments later by Hermione. I was aware of the Grangers walking away, and their emotional turmoil as their only child had now left their world. Not that they wouldn't see her again, but they understood that basically she'd be in an entirely different culture and would have less and less in common with them thereafter.

I turned to the ghost of a warrior woman who was sitting nearby and looking sad. "(How about you? What's your story?)"

"They call me Boudica," said the woman. "The school passage sits directly over my bones."

"(Well, that's rude,)" I said.

"It was necessary for the first laying of spells to choose an anchor that was significant," said Boudica. "Since my bones lie three quarters of the way from Platform 9 to Platform 10..."

"(Oh, is that where that comes from,)" I remarked. That made a bit more sense that way.

"You'll miss the train," pointed out the ghost.

"(Ah, well then, I'll see you next time round then,)" I told her before zipping through the column myself.

Folded space, basically a wormhole or teleport effect. That meant the platform was actually somewhere nearby. Interesting.

As was a large locomotive. And a set of tracks the train meant to go on. Which made NO FREAKING SENSE for a society that was trying to keep its existence SECRET!

I mean seriously. Trains had all sorts of warning and signalling systems now to keep trains from hitting each other, that and precise schedules which were often somewhat less than precise. So you had all the students going from London to Wales by a bleeding obvious TRAIN.

Oh, there were a couple of if-then magics thrown over the whole thing. If you weren't magic you'd get that whole "part of the background not worth paying attention to" effect. I idly wondered how many cars got hit every year because the bloody train bearing down on them at an intersection had that sort of effect thrown on it.

Sometimes I got the feeling that the entire magical community was counting on some sort of "no consequences" spell effect. There might actually be one though so I shouldn't judge until I got a chance to research it. If there was such a thing, I'd imagine a direct link to the Akashic Record. That'd be awkward to the say the least. Or maybe this was a universe that had a living Record.

If there were no "No Consequences" spell or effect but things like this locomotive were running around, then the whole Statute of Secrecy thing indicated that this world was seriously screwed up.

I'd half expect Thanatos to walk by and proclaim Harry his grandson or something, the way things were seriously screwed up around here.

Honestly, the magic use thing might mean divine lineage getting involved. Wouldn't be the first time I'd run across that sort of thing. The Greek deities tended to be a bit free with their affections. The Norse were a rowdy bunch too. Might be something to that.

Hopefully there wouldn't be any of the Keres or Moirai around. In my tiny economical form I would be at a serious disadvantage. Though typically the Moirai wouldn't be as much of a problem due to philosophical considerations.

I settled into place on the train, having decided on a spot in the compartment Harry and Hermione were sharing in the luggage rack. That way I could observe without being obviously there.

"-it was a bit bothersome actually," said Hermione to Harry. "I mean, seriously, what do they think they're doing by running around shouting 'Obliviate' and erasing memories left and right? I kept going back to do my homework and found that I'd already done it."

"At least they never did that to me," said Harry softly, idly stroking the back of the dog that was sitting on the bench next to him.

The tiger, though more a panther in shape/size, was melded with the shadows of one corner. To anyone who didn't know what they were looking at, they'd probably just see a blotch of deep shadows. A blotch of deep shadows that was currently snoozing.

A knock on the door interrupted Hermione while she was taking a breath to go further into her dissatisfaction with memory-charms.

"Speak, friend, and enter," said Harry, earning a smirk and eyeroll from Hermione.

"Friend? Hello. Ah, Hermione," said a slightly pudgy boy as he opened the door.

"Neville!" said Hermione, brightening up. "Harry, this is Neville Longbottom. His mother tracked the dragon to our house and stopped all the memory-charms going off. Instead they just threw a 'not my problem' spell on Crookshanks and myself. Thank you again for that."

"Ah, not a problem," said a clearly embarassed Neville, rubbing the back of his head, then he apparently remembered something and bowed slightly (about 30 degrees or so it looked from my vantage) and said stumbled over the words a bit. "Harry Potter, Heir of the Ancient and Noble House of Potter, I presume. I am Neville Longbottom, of the Ancient House of Longbottom. My family and yours were allies."

"Ah, well, I'm really not sure how I'm supposed to respond to that," admitted Harry.

"Oh, ah, well then," said Neville, "uhm."

"Don't look at me," said Hermione, despite that nobody WAS looking at her until she spoke. "I didn't study up on wizarding upper society things because it is quite apparent they would never accept me anyway."

"That's fine," said Harry. "Have to look that up though, I expect. If that sort of thing's a big deal in the wizarding world."

"Yeah it is," said Neville. "Mind if we come in?"

"'We'?" asked Harry.

Neville entered, and a moment later something followed him in.

I blinked and craned my neck to get a better look, which drew Neville's attention immediately. "Oh. Hello there. Awake at last, are you?"

I trilled briefly at him.

"Yes, well, you dropped this little fellow off a couple of years ago," said Neville.

For some reason, I'd expected a toad. This wasn't - being something that looked like a particularly shaggy black wolfhound puppy.

"He's grown a bit, hasn't he?" asked Hermione.

"Yeah, a bit," said Neville. "So, the Corgi is lightning. Your panther is shadow. The dragon is fire. Grim here is a fae dog and air element."

"I would have thought Shadow, all things considered," said Hermione.

"*Shadow and Earth actually.*" The dog's voice was harsh and hard to understand.

"Have to give him lots of exercise, which got easier as we went along," said Neville as he hopped onto the bench.

"Noticed you were in better shape," said Hermione.

The door opened again. "Any room here, everywhere else is..." The redheaded boy looked around. Not much room here either. His eyes fell upon a patch of shadows watching him with glittering eyes. "What?"

"I think we've got room for one more," said Neville. "Grim, you can sprawl on the floor near the window."

"A grim?!" yelped the redhead, who closed the door swiftly and apparently decided to find somewhere else to sit.

"Why does everyone make that assumption?" asked Neville. "Grandmum named him because he kind of looks like it. Seriously though."

"People rush to conclusions based on appearance," said Hermione. "It's because sight is our primary means of determining what's dangerous and what's not, and assess things based on that. Survival trait in earlier times, also gets into that predator and prey thing. That's why some animals like some species of caterpillar look like dangerous ones but aren't. Defensive mimicry I think it's called-"

"Hermione. Breathe." Harry sounded faintly amused.

"Oh, right. Blathering. Sorry." Hermione actually blushed and looked contrite about it.

"That's fine, I-"

The door chuffed open again. "Sorry, everything's full up. Which shouldn't be possible."

"Yeah," said the twin of the first one. "You'd think they'd just add another car or something."

"Probably weren't expecting the number of new students, it's been kinda dwindling for awhile," offered Neville.

"A GRIM?!" squeaked the first of the twins.

"*That's my name,*" grumped Grim.

Whatever reaction anyone expected, it was probably not one of the twins to hug the Grim while the other twin started to hyperventilate.


	8. Sorting and Dragons

one Floo Over - Error Path

Chapter Eight Sorting & Dragons

by Nimodes

\-- --

Disclaimer: warning. fanfiction, the writing of a story set in someone else's playground.

\-- --

The twins in question were not identical but were named Padma and Parvati Patil. Third generation Indian descent, and therefore not considered Ancient or Noble within British Wizarding Society.

Any thought about the group not being friends was immediately put aside when one of the twins (Parvati) brought out an assortment of pastries that were apparently of some traditional sort.

Neville remarked on the importance of tradition in wizarding society. Hermione noted that the sugar content appeared to be fairly high. Harry pointed out that it would be rude to refuse to honor someone else's cultural heritage in the sharing of such items. Grim idly sniffed and wondered if one of the sticky buns could perhaps find itself his way.

Hermione was therefore outvoted and found herself guiltily nibbling on something which at least contained fruit and therefore could be considered healthy on some level. Right?

After that, the discussion turned to the Houses and the Sorting.

"There's some sort of tradition where nobody is supposed to tell the first-years what the test actually is," said Parvati from where she was scritching the large black dog behind the ears.

Said dog had grumbled slightly about the lack of dignity but wasn't moving away.

"It isn't mentioned in 'Hogwarts - A History'," noted Hermione. "There IS a lot about the Houses though."

"Ravenclaw for those who value learning over all," said Padma. "Gryffindor for courage, Slytherin for ambition, Hufflepuff for hard work."

"Which sounds completely bogus," pointed out her sister. "It takes hard work to get top grades. Word up is that Slytherin is supposed to be ambition and cunning, but that lately they show all the cunning of a bag of rocks. Gryffindor is known for a lack of common sense. Hufflepuff is generally looked down upon as duffers by the other three, and Ravenclaw is supposed to have a lot of cliques and in-house politicking."

"That from cousin Prisha?" asked Padma. At Parvati's nod, Padma added that their cousin was a bit of a cynic and that the assessment might be less than completely accurate. For that matter it might be completely accurate. "Most people who go heavily into books and learning have an ambition, and Parvati's right in that there's hard work involved. Courage - anyone who sticks around with the kind of thing that can go wrong with magic has to have a fair amount of that. So the idea that someone has one quality and none of the others is kind of nonsensical."

"So what kind of test do you suppose it is? I mean, the rumors are really all over the place," Parvati asked Hermione.

"Probably not a written test," said Hermione. Which was a pity, she felt. After all if it was a written test she felt she had a good chance of passing. "Maybe something like the scales in the Egyptian afterlife myths, where the amount of each quality is weighed?"

"That would make some sense," agreed Parvati. "I heard one of the boys earlier saying something about wrestling a troll. Which is completely daft - none of the Hogwarts Houses values physical strength."

"Not to mention having an eleven-year-old wrestle a troll would be completely mental. And one-sided," said Hermione.

"I hope I go into Ravenclaw," said Padma. "They supposedly have a private library. Not as good as the main library but you could access it after curfew."

"You spend too much time in books," said Parvati. "I'm thinking that Gryff would be better. After all, it's the same House for seven years - you have to choose the sort you'll associate with for that sort of long time."

"You don't want to end up in the same House?" asked Harry, thinking family ought to stick together.

"Absolutely NOT," stated Padma and Parvati together.

"While I love my dear sister, you have no idea how old it gets having to share EVERYTHING," added Parvati.

"Exactly my sentiments," said Padma.

"Harry, you don't have to answer if you don't want, but as you're the Heir of an Ancient and Noble House - I have to ask why you're wearing clothing that is kind of obviously hand-me-down," asked Parvati.

"What?" asked Harry, looking very evasive.

"Sorry, Harry, I have to go with Padma on this," said Neville.

"I'm Parvati," said Parvati, rolling her eyes. "We're not identical, you know."

"Sorry, I'm just not that good with names," apologized Neville. "But really - Harry - we've both got to uphold that whole 'Heir of House' thing. Gran's tried drilling me on all sorts of proper etiquette and such."

Harry mumbled something under his breath.

"I think I know," said Hermione. She paused, waiting for Harry to object. "It's because we ended up having to fetch that dragon a couple of times when it was sleep-flying and ended up over there. Fortunately, my father put a label on his back with our phone number. Unfortunately, Harry doesn't actually have access to any money, beyond a bit in his vault and that's fairly recent. The muggle family he's staying with treat him worse than most people treat their dogs."

"*Leave him outside when it rains?*" asked Grim.

"Pretty much," managed Harry aloud.

"Well, that's rot," said Neville. "I'll write Gran. You'll need at least one set of formal clothes for some functions."

"'Functions'?" asked Harry, sounding as if the word was both unfamiliar and somewhat dreadful.

Neville merely nodded. "There are various holidays and events where you and I need to be seen and have to look all proper. Same with anyone who is an Heir or such."

"Such as?" asked Hermione, curious as to what Harry would look like cleaned up. "The functions, I mean."

"Funerals, school assemblies," said Neville, counting off points as he tried to remember the details, "any sort of court appearance or such."

"'Funerals'?" asked Hermione. "Why would there even BE funerals?"

"You're muggleborn or raised, right?" asked Parvati. "Otherwise you'd know the answer to that."

"We've got family that are out in the muggle world, so we know," added Padma. "The muggle world is a LOT less dangerous than the wizard world. In the muggle world they've got things like having to wear seat belts and that 'Green Cross Code' and such. In magical society we don't have a lot of that sort of thing."

"Take brooms for example," said Parvati.

"Visits back to India, we can fly with carpets. MUCH more comfortable," confided Padma. "Overbalance on a broom, you're hanging upside down all of a sudden. Overbalance on a carpet, you're just lying down."

"Plus there's stuff like boggarts and acromantula and such which show up where there's a lot of magic," said Parvati. "In Japan and China they've even got magical pest eliminator services. Rather like the outfits!"

"I'd prefer something with a bit more coverage, thank you," said Padma.

"Except for the sailor outfits, you kind of fancied those," countered Parvati.

"All I said was that they weren't as bad as some of them," corrected Padma. "I could see ice-skating or something in outfits like that."

"Work uniforms?" asked Hermione. On seeing a nod from both twins, Hermione went thoughtful briefly. "Come to think of it. I don't really know that much about employment opportunities after Hogwarts. I know that there's some difficulties in getting jobs if you're muggleborn though."

"Check with your Head of House after second year," suggested Parvati. "They advise on all sorts of things like that."

Neville briefly looked like he wanted to say something, but held back. Instead he tried something else. "Ever since I got Grim, who could tell I've got magic - Gran's been teaching me all about being a proper Longbottom Heir. You got any questions, Harry, you be sure to ask me. If I don't know, I can ask Gran about it."

"Uhm, thanks I guess," said Harry, sounding profoundly embarassed and uncomfortable.

"So, you've got a Church Grim," said Parvati.

"*More or less,*" offered Grim.

"A what?" asked Hermione.

"Grims are ghost-dogs. Some are the Black Hounds Of The Moors and are the scary ones that hunt humans," said Parvati. "Church Grims are formed when a dog dies guarding someone's grave and the dog ends up buried in the churchyard. The dog becomes a spectral hound that protects the graveyard."

"So they're basically spirit-guardians?" asked Hermione. "That's good. Not as good as Crookshanks, but good."

"And you've got a dog?" asked Parvati before her eyes widened. "THORGI!"

"Arf!" proclaimed Thorgi.

"He was on Blue Peter," said Padma. "They were covering exotic animals. Including the fellow in the luggage rack."

I trilled a hello at the two. It seemed the polite thing to do.

"Cousin Prisha couldn't find work in the wizarding end and works the muggle side of the fence," said Padma. "She taped the program for us." 

"You were on the telly?" asked Harry of his dog.

"Arf!" declared Thorgi.

"What's a 'telly' and who's 'Blue Peter'?" asked Neville, hopelessly lost.

"Sorry, Neville, I forgot," said Hermione. "Purebloods and wizarding society are usually not up on any muggle development past the railroad."

"Well, we're not that bad," said Neville.

"Yes, we are," said Parvati. "Oh. Home. Shopping. Network. We definitely need one."

"As long as you can avoid things like telemarketers," said Hermione.

"I have no idea what you are talking about," said Neville.

The sound of them trying to explain to Neville about television, the long-running children's show Blue Peter, and the sort of subjects it carried quickly began going further and further afield. Which was fine for them, but I was trying to figure out some of the magic getting involved when the whole thing was interrupted.

The door shuffed open without anyone knocking. "There's a rumor about Harry Potter being on the train."

"Uhm, yes," began Hermione. "Hello. We were just trying to explain the sailing ship motif to Neville here."

"Oh?" asked the boy. "Do I know you?"

"No?" asked Hermione, not too sure about the disdain being directed her way.

"Draco Malfoy," said Neville with a nod.

"Longbottom," said Draco.

"Draco Malfoy is the Heir of House Malfoy, very influential within pureblood society," said Neville.

"Indeed," said Draco, puffing up a bit. "This is Mister Crabbe and Mister Goyle, my associates."

"Excuse me, coming through," said someone in the corridor.

"Oh, pardon," said Draco, moving on with his entourage as there wasn't room in the compartment with a large dog sprawling across the floor. Besides that one corner was full of dark shadows with a pair of green eyes that made him nervous for some reason.

"Anything from the trolley, dears?" asked the woman with the cart.

"Wizard candy?" asked Harry. "Should I?"

"You've never had candy either, have you?" asked Hermione. "I mean, not that you should. Cavities, gum disease, and the like. But still."

Harry came to a decision. "How much for a set of each?"

Which was one of the most normal things I'd ever seen. A bunch of eleven-year-olds at least temporarily bonding as they tore into various sugar-laden products.

"Meh," I said when I was offered a "Bernie Botts" jelly bean that smelled of bile.

"Maybe it's like dogs and chocolate," said Hermione. "It's not good for them."

"(No. That one smells like bile. Since the package says 'Every-Flavored' that's not much of a stretch.)"

"Oh, that's handy," said Harry. "If your sense of smell is good enough, you might be able to tell what flavor it is without having to eat one."

Neville was intrigued. "You'd be able to pull out the good ones and leave the bogey-flavored or dung-flavored ones for someone else."

"It might be because the sense of smell is important to taste," offered Hermione. "Wish I'd thought of that before the earwax-flavored jelly bean."

"What do these do?" asked Harry, taking out something else.

"It's a licorice wand," answered Neville, thinking that the muggle world not even having licorice was awfully odd.

"Well, if it was a muggle candy that's all it would be," said Harry, eyeing it uncertainly. "What does the wizarding version do? Whip you as you try to eat it? I mean you've got chocolate frogs that try to escape and Acid Pops which can eat a hole in your tongue."

"Uh, no, it's just licorice," said Neville.

"Gummy worms?" asked Harry, pointing.

"Jelly slugs," corrected Neville.

"'Slugs'?" asked Hermione. "Please tell me that they do NOT taste like slug."

"Well, no, that one's crazyberry," said Neville, wondering if eating slugs was normal in the muggle world. Probably not based on the expression of extreme disgust on Hermione's face.

"Crazyberry doesn't cause insanity, does it?" asked Hermione, taking one of the long gummies and looking as if she wasn't sure she even wanted one in her hand.

"Not that I know of," said Neville.

Hermione took a bite, stood up and began cackling evilly. "It's alive! It's ALIVE! IT'S ALIVE!!!"

"Gene Wilder in 'Young Frankenstein'?" asked Harry mildly.

"Yes, Dad loves the movie," said Hermione. She turned her head to the side and regarded the cringing Neville.

"It was a joke, Neville," said Harry. "Movie reference. Mad scientist. Pretty good imitation too."

"Thank you," said Hermione, inclining her head as she sat.

"What's a 'movie'?" asked Neville.

* break *

There had been a bad moment or two, mainly when the ghosts had shown up and a dragon had spat a bolt of flame at one that had burned through a spectral sleeve. At which point all the ghosts had given a WIDE berth to the firsties.

The sorting went pretty much normal, though the crowd had shown enormous curiosity about the animals accompanying several of the first-years.

The teacher that had identified herself as Minerva McGonagall hadn't so much as batted an eye though.

"Hermione Granger and Crookshanks," said McGonagall.

The large cat gave the teacher a nod of acknowledgement and took a guard position near the barstool that the hat had been placed on.

The hat sunk onto her head for a moment. Then two. Half a minute.

"A hatstall?" asked one of the people at the nearest table.

"Ravenclaw," stated the hat finally.

There were a few murmurs at that, as someone with a HUGE cat like that seemed awfully Gryffindorish.

The next hatstall was on "Longbottom, Neville" - and there were a few people who SWORE he'd entered with a huge hound of particularly ominous look - but there was no sign of it now.

The hat finally gave out "Gryffindor" as its choice for the Longbottom heir.

Parvati and Padma ended up in different Houses, one for Ravenclaw and one for Gryffindor.

"Harry Potter," said McGonagall.

"Arf!"

"-and Thorgi," said McGonagall, sounding somewhat amused by the dog's insistence on being included.

Harry walked to the chair and sat upon it while putting the hat on. Thorgi strutted up to take a place alongside the chair, clearly proud to be included.

The Sorting Hat screamed. "SLYTHERIN! SLYTHERIN! GET ME OFF! DON'T LET IT GET ME!"

To say things went immediately dead silent would be to understate things.

"Just kidding," appended the Hat. "Let me take a look again."

Two redheads fell straight off the bench at their table.

"Did the-" began one redhead.

"-Sorting Hat just PRANK us?!" asked the second redhead.

"Yes, I did, and quite well too," said the Hat. "Wouldn't hurt to get me out more than once a year, would it? Haven't even seen a quidditch match in a century. OTHER hats get to go places..."

Harry sat under the Hat briefly, but it hadn't gone more than a minute before it declared. "Gryffindor it is then. If you went to Slytherin I have little doubt that there wouldn't be many of them left to graduate in a few years."

"Oh, do it!" called out one of the redheaded twins.

"I don't think so," said McGonagall, who turned her attention back to the list and went on to call the next name.

That Slytherin House was collectively watching Harry Potter take his seat and showing a bit of uncertainty was completely understandable. Caution was clearly something that most of the House would be keeping in mind.

More than a few were speculating that the original response of the Hat had NOT been a prank.

* break *

"So we'll get together for revising and for times when we aren't stuck with our Houses, agreed?" asked Hermione.

"Agreed," said Harry.

"Oh, ickle firsties trying to-"

A dog stepped out of the shadows, or was it formed of the shadows? Whatever, it was dog-shaped and formed of blackness except for eyes that were glowing green and teeth that were a gleaming shade of white that promised PAIN.

Peeves paused at the sight of that dog. "Oh. Pardon me. I forgot to preheat the lawn. Later."

"What was THAT?" asked Padma.

"*Poltergeist*," rumbled Grim. "*Annoyance.*"

"Whatever," said Hermione, deciding it wasn't important. "Oh. Excuse me."

"That dog just frightened off Peeves," said the oldish-looking man. He considered something for a few moments before asking. "Gets along with cats though?"

"Oh yes, he gets along great with Crookshanks," said Hermione.

"Good enough then," decided the guy. "Come along Mrs Norris. We're looking for rulebreakers, and I don't see any violation of rules here."

"Odd fellow," said Hermione after the man had left.


	9. Classes & Dragons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A dragon at Hogwarts.

one Floo Over - Error Path

Chapter Nine: Classes & Dragons

by Nimodes

\-- --

Disclaimer: warning. fanfiction, the writing of a story set in someone else's playground.

\-- --

As a dragon, the idea of attending classes was quickly discouraged.

Harry Potter had Thorgi, the dog of thunder. Hermione had Crookshanks, the shadow panther. Neville had Grim, who was close enough to being a Church Grim. None of them, despite being registered as familiars, were allowed in class.

Which meant that I could try chatting with the owls, except they didn't really like being up this early in any case. Nor did I bring bacon or jerky or anything similar that they could cadge.

Which meant that I could try finding the kitchens and talking with the Hogwarts House Elves. Who didn't understand a dang thing I said and weren't interested in talking to a dragon (even one smaller than themselves) in any case.

Which meant I could wander a castle where the corridors and staircases were known to change position and otherwise get bored as all hell.

Yes, actually, there IS a section of Hell which includes the feature of being mind-numbingly boring.

None of the portraits were able to understand me either, and most reacted to the presence of even a small dragon with considerable trepidation. One would think they were flimsy and flammable, but being that they were oil paintings that quite possibly was a factor.

The ghosts seemed somewhat reluctant to spend time around me as well. None of whom were apparently able to speak dragon or snake or Celestial. Possibly because I was Celestial and therefore associated with things they actively avoided.

On the other hand, I found four mostly-stable secret passages. One led to a girls' bathroom on the second floor and a very unhappy ghost. Not that I would be particularly happy if I haunted a bathroom and had to duck down through the plumbing when I needed an exit. Yeah, that was a fairly sucky afterlife.

Another secret passage led to the kitchens if you tickled a pear in a painting. A third secret passage went from the dungeon area to a third floor corridor without any other connection. The final one connected two broom closets on the third floor.

The unstable secret passages were determined to have rules regarding their use that I couldn't completely read from the underlying structure, mainly because Hogwarts itself was so magically forceful it tended to drown out lesser bits. Kind of like trying to listen to a conversation at a rock concert. Some parts I could tell from examining involved conditions like "moon in the House of The Archer" or "only on the day of the Winter Solstice" or "whilst walking backwards without shoes" or similar fragments. Everything connected to other spaces within the castle/school with very few exceptions and those few exceptions were all one-way. At least among those I had found.

As it turned out, I was sufficiently sensitive to magic that I had to spend time at or near the boundaries just to relax a bit. Again, the similarities to a particularly loud rock concert started to get to me. Hogwarts was built on what was considered a double ley line nexus. Two major sets of ley lines (or four lines in total) intersected and threw power into the wards of Hogwarts. Which didn't mean much as far as the amount of power in the wards themselves were relatively weak and gauzy compared to the power they could have had. If everything else drawing power was cut to the bare minimum and all power thrown into the purely defensive wards - I thought it likely you'd need nearly a nuclear weapon to get through it. Against magical assault it would be even more effective. Instead you had all these loopholes and conditions and parts siphoned off for use here and there until it resembled some countries' tax codes in sheer complexity.

So it was rather like a rock concert, with multiple bands playing at the same time and different tunes and sub-genres and so on. Which made my wanting to get out to the edge of the boundaries fairly often somewhat understandable. As long as I could concentrate on not listening - it was irritating and part of the background. As soon as I started paying attention to the noise, it would be a major headache. Sleeping in the dorms was out of the question after the first night.

On the other hand, in my explorations in the first month I discovered a few things that I had not suspected.

First off - not everyone in Slytherin thought Draco Malfoy was worth listening to, but they had this policy of showing a united front where the other Houses could see them. There were factions there, and a sort of pecking order among the snakes, but there were members who barely tolerated the loud little boy and I got the feeling they only did so because they must.

Second, that whole "united front where other Houses could see you" was a policy in three of the four Houses. Ravenclaw was even more broken up into cliques than Slytherin. Hufflepuff was the worst on that sort of thing, but also a lot more relaxed. Apparently the attitude there was that nobody took Hufflepuff seriously, especially the members of Hufflepuff. 

Third, I found myself invited to a regular game of D&D being held in Hufflepuff on Saturdays about 2100 local time. Three Fourth-year students had started it, and had been joined by a Sixth-year and a Second-year student. All Hufflepuffs. One of whom was trying to figure out how to create spells based on the magic system in D&D.

Fourth, there were a pair of twins in Gryffindor who amused and alarmed me in equal measure. Their names were Fred and George Weasley. Or Forge and Gred, among other contortions. I scratched a few notes with my tail, suggesting they might want to borrow some of the D&D books in Hufflepuff for inspiration. Mainly because I wanted to see if they could make some of the items. A portable hole or wand of magic missiles might be awfully handy to have around if there was an Epic Fantasy Quest going on.

I found Hagrid's hut to be quite interesting. Fang was a large hound and fairly intelligent, though he was about as brave as Scooby Doo. If a beef jerky golem attacked, I'm sure he'd be on top of the situation. Anything more threatening was likely to see him flee. Fang himself thought this was only sensible as he was a dog and therefore not likely to be of great utility against some of the threats in the Forbidden Forest.

"Oi, little fella, what're ye up to?" asked the half-giant when he noticed me.

I trilled and tried to communicate to him that I was just exploring.

"A spot o' tea, eh?" asked Hagrid.

I licked my snout. Or was it considered a muzzle? Not entirely sure what the bitey end of a dragon would be considered in such a statement. Whatever the case, a cuppa would be rather nice.

"Right, strong it is," said Hagrid. "Always wanted to have a dragon o'er for tea."

I nodded and grinned at him, finding this a refreshingly common-sensical attitude to take. Mind you, the local dragons not being entirely sentient meant that they wouldn't be entirely on board with such a development but being polite to non-hostile sentient non-humans was generally a good policy. T

The tea, when Hagrid had finished, was indeed quite strong. After the first sip, I was considering the potential use as a wood stain.

"I just finished my lesson plan for this year, wanna see it?" asked Hagrid as I tried to work on one of his little cakes. Said cakes having a toughness factor that I doubted human jaws could manage to overcome.

I trilled and nodded, and when the paper was put in front of me I had a few moments of trying to decipher his handwriting. Cursive script was not terribly useful in the muggle world and Hagrid's spelling and writing style had me wondering if perhaps Hogwarts ought to consider having a few "muggle classes" dealing with handwriting and things that the magical world could use more of. Like making a proper pot of tea that didn't double as a wood stain.

When I could make it out, I snorted - careful to turn my head in case a bit of flame popped out. Then I looked up at the half-giant to determine if this was a joke. At his serious expression, I shook my head and flew over to where he'd gotten the paper and pen.

The first thing I did was write out reasoning behind decisions, such as:

[1. Young students are often foolish, fragile, and frightened easily. Plan accordingly.]  
[2. Emphasize creatures they are likely to normally encounter within the wizarding world to start with.]  
[3. Start with 'what can go wrong with this' and include that in the planning stage.]  
[4. Figure out what the students are likely most interested in. Use examples to get them interested.]  
[4a: Slytherins are "what's in it for them" or "how can I use this" - household guardians, creatures that provide a skill or benefit they don't have.]  
[4b: Gryffindors are about courage and strength. Likely interests similar to Slytherins, just presented differently.]  
[4c: Ravenclaw are about knowledge and information. Low maintenance creatures, or creatures that can give them a benefit to information gathering.]  
[4d: Hufflepuffs are friendship and loyalty, also hard work. Creatures that are naturally friendly will be a draw.]  
[5. Later in year, with appropriate safety considerations, go for dangerous creatures they might encounter and emphasize how to survive encounters.]  
[5a: consider working with the Defense teacher for suggestions and possibilities there.]

I looked up at Hagrid as he went over the list.

"Huh," said Hagrid. "Nice handwriting. Errr, tailwriting I guess. Whatta ya suggest then?"

I blinked at him, then flew to the shelves of books. Looked like I'd found a project to keep me busy while everyone was in classes.

Another was Professor Flitwick, who found my flame to be a very interesting research project and in turn helped me work out possibilities in enchanting. A Professor Babbling was interested in fuuinjutsu, which was apparently considered a subset of Runecrafting - her own specialty.

So, I had a routine I could manage while the various individuals were all engaged in classes. Spending days exploring, consulting with either Hagrid or Professor Flitwick or Professor Babbling, occasionally using my teleport to go outside the boundaries of Hogwarts and the local area to acquire some supplies or do courier duties, and there was the D&D game in Hufflepuff to attend on Saturday night. I was playing a dwarf cleric who was interested in coming up with recipes that involved various monsters they had to fight anyway. Because the reactions to Basilisk Au Gratin or Giant Serpent Kabobs was interesting.

* break *

"'Songs that are permissable to sing along with'?"

I nodded.

"What kind of songs?" asked Fred. Or was it George?

Hagrid's hut was far enough away from Hogwarts proper that some mechanisms could work. An old cassette player was sufficient and I had managed one day to get some suitable songs. I'd probably have to get further away to get something more advanced working without major magical wards or overhauls to avoid the magic Heisenberging the heck out of it.

"Bohemian Rhapsody" and "House of the Rising Sun" were obvious choices to introduce to the musically inclined duo. (Most people knew about their love of pranks. Turned out the two also loved music. When I mentioned combining the two, I got two surprised looks and then grins. Suddenly I felt I'd done something that would have horrible terrible consequences.) I followed "Rising Sun" up with ones that I thought had catchy enough tunes with understandable lyrics like "Putting On The Ritz" and "Werewolves of London" that if they included such in their pranks it wouldn't be too out-of-bounds.

Perhaps there was a special place in one of the Hells for people who introduced songs like "Ballroom Blitz" to a pair of magical pranksters, but I thought the odds were roughly fifty-fifty this could end up biting me in the tail or being awesome down the road.

The twins weren't the only ones present this early Sunday morning. A couple of Ravenclaw students, one of the Hufflepuff in the D&D group, and (oddly enough) a Slytherin who happened to like music and was intrigued by the idea of a "muggle music box with the ability to change tunes" as she interpreted my notes.

Hagrid liked music apparently, and was caught humming "Putting On The Ritz" afterwards.

Ron Weasley had been curious as well, but his inclusion in the group saw a bunch of awkward questions coming about because apparently his entire idea of muggles was influenced by a comic book dealing with a mad muggle who couldn't get anything right and whose intelligence score was somewhere in the negatives. The idea of there being muggles whose level of sophistication was somewhere above that of a well-trained yak was completely alien to him despite his father being in a government office dealing with muggle "artifacts" and magic.

Seriously, was the wizarding society so dead-set against even basic understanding of the nonmagical majority that they couldn't even get the century right? How did they even cope with the London rail system? Which you think they'd have to as they had that King's Cross station bit with the Hogwarts Express.

Well, besides poorly.

Then, because I'd had something in my Inventory, I gave them the translated "Guren No Yumiya". With the German chorus. I had heard that the school had sport teams involving something called quidditch and I thought that might make a good "take the field" tune for their team.

Apparently THAT was also a new idea.

Huh. Maybe I should get them a catalog or something, though I was pretty sure mail order would be a pain with the anti-muggle stuff they had up.

\-- --

I had worked with Hagrid, as my handwriting (despite using a prehensile tail for it) was better than his, as to the invitations and such. Also, as my species was basically a courier and higher-dimension variation of the local post-owls, it was kind of fitting for me to do the delivery of such once I had a good idea of where to go. To my initial surprise - Professor Flitwick turned out to have connections to assist in that regard as apparently he'd been on the international dueling circuit and been in various exotic locales.

Australia, apparently, had a magical school of its own. According to what I was able to learn from Professor Flitwick - all the various myths and memes about Australia being an insanely dangerous environment were because the magical segments really were that dangerous. Nine of the ten most dangerous magical species were native to Australia. Despite that the Australian school for magic was considered minor due to something the Professor didn't seem to want to speak of. Possibly politics, which was a thorny subject to a number of people at the best of times. I was able to facilitate the acquisition of a couple of billywigs, a sort of magical flying insect, for the half-giant and the Professor who was actually teaching the class at the time. (I had been corrected on Hagrid's teaching of the class as apparently the current teacher was retiring and attempting to coach Hagrid into being the replacement.)

China and Japan had an entirely different thing going. There were Enchanted Beasts, much as there were in Europe, as well as Yuki-onna, Kitsune, Naga, and so on.

Greece had its own various Beings. Merpeople, Sirens, Cyclops, Chimerae and so on originated over there and could be found in all sorts of places since then but Greece had some of the largest populations - with their own warded island preserves. There were also Meliae and Oceanids and Fauns and others.

Having a selection of possibilities, fitting 'care for' and 'make use of' and 'defend against' into the same class could make things quite interesting for the later years.

I'd also run into the stories of something that I brought to the attention of the kids.

\-- --

Hermione had read the bookmarked section of the tome first, and been curious afterwards before I saw the dawning horror in her face. Harry got it immediately, Neville had to have it explained to him.

"So, if the Dursleys had been successful in 'beating the freakishness out of Harry'," said Hermione as way of explaining it to Neville.

"That would have happened to me," whispered Harry.

"That... would have been bad," said Neville.

"Wait. If we don't attend and graduate Hogwarts, or if we get expelled, then they snap our wand and Obliviate the muggle-borns, right?" asked Hermione, her mind quickly working out more of the situation. "So there's a chance that-"

"That's even worse," opined Harry.

"Either that or a lifetime of psychological counseling and being heavily medicated," noted the daughter of dental surgeons. "Lovely."

"Never thought about it that way," admitted Neville. "Haven't heard about it happening though, and you'd think I would have if Obscurials were that common."

\-- --

The soon-to-retire Professor Kettleburn reminded me of someone I knew in a previous life. He was missing pieces of himself (three fingers and part of a leg) and was in the profession of taking care of magical creatures. While he acted like he knew what he was doing - that he WAS missing pieces of himself was less confidence-building.

Hagrid was actually a good choice for a replacement if the physical qualities were given primary consideration, and he was an excellent groundskeeper with that point factored in. In this universe, giants were physically durable and magically resistant. He also had a fair amount of poison resistance according to one remark he made about the acromantulas.

The problems with Hagrid were twofold. One, he wasn't exactly an idiot but he was hardly the sharpest tool in the shed. He was one of those simple, straightforward, friendly individuals - the epitome of the gentle giant. He was kind of an anti-Slytherin as he was about as cunning and ambitious as an iron brick. On the other hand, I got the impression that he could be as formidable and unyielding as one if any child was threatened in his presence.

Second, as someone as physically formidable as he naturally was - he tended to assume that others had his own gifts. Trying to remind him that they could die a lot easier would be a constant thing. Normal wizards and witches were not resistant to poisons, were a lot more fragile, and were prone to magical diseases like dragon pox that didn't afflict the non-magical populace.

I was a Celestial Dragon, but I was a bit over two feet in length so while I was tougher than I appeared - I wasn't going to try and face giants or acromantula on my own if I could help it.

"Hagrid? You came up with this?" asked Kettleburn as he looked over Hagrid's notes. "Your handwriting has improved in spots."

"The little guy helped," admitted Hagrid.

I chirped.

"Ah, the intelligent dragon. Next thing you know, we'll see 'blink dogs' or something," said Kettleburn.

There was a flash and crash of thunder and Thorgi stood nearby, barked once at me, then disappeared in another flash and crash.

"I'm REALLY getting too old for this," complained Kettleburn.


End file.
